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Page Mandarin, or is it?

faeriegarden
14 years ago

Long story short we bought this today because our grand daughter wanted to get a tangerine and any interest shown in gardening is rewarded with a yes. She picked it out after reading all of the descriptions and finding that they were out of her first choice, Pixi.

Now it seems as I research it that it is not exactly a clementine or mandarin, but a tangelo hybrid. How does it taste?

And the tag says dwarf (DurlingÂs), honestly I find dwarf confusing. How do I know what size it will reach when planted in the ground? There was no information on size at the nursery except that it said dwarf. We should have asked, but we didnÂt.

We did plant it but, I think I am having buyers remorse.

Comments (7)

  • oviedo_apples
    14 years ago

    A Page (commonly called 'Page Orange') is a hybrid of a Minneola Tangelo and a Clementine mandarin. This makes it a Tantangelo by standard nomenclature but the name is seldom used by anyone. A Minneola is a hybrid of a Dancy tangerine and a Bowen grapefruit. The page is therefore 3/4 mandarin and 1/4 grapefruit by ancestry. The reason it's often called a 'Page Orange' is because that's what the fruit most resembles in taste/etc.

    It is seldom grown commercially because the fruit of it are generally fairly small. Commercially the largest fruit generates the most profit (supposedly). For home growers, small fruit isn't as much of an issue, so the Page is much more common as a dooryard tree.

    One of the biggest plusses of the Page is that it fruits *very* early and hangs on the tree extremely well. It can supposedly fruit in October and hang on the tree until February. It's for this reason that I purchased one for *my* orchard. Unfortunately, I did so only a few weeks ago and can not tell you anything about the tree from personal experience.

    Of minuses, the tree is susceptible to scab and really needs another tree as pollinizer. Temple is a common choice but since you wanted a tangerine, I'd suggest a Dancy since as a grandparent of the Page it should be very compatible.

    On the dwarf issue, it really depends on what rootstock they used. Dwarf trees are often used when you want to keep the tree in a pot. I would **guess** that the resulting tree will almost assuredly be less than 10' high when mature, and likely between 6-8'.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Some data on the Page

  • tolumnia
    14 years ago

    We have nine Page trees. It is far and away our favorite citrus. The fruit is great tasting and makes the best juice of any orange. I have one tree that is 8 years old and got about a bushel of fruit off it this year. That tree is about 15 feet tall and spreads a about the same. My other 8 trees are younger, but I still got lots of fruit this year.

    Each year I go down to central Florida and buy 10-15 bushels of Pages to give away for Christmas presents. Everyone loves them, and one older woman told my mother "I wish he had never given me those damn Pages, now I cannot eat or juice any other orange."

  • oviedo_apples
    14 years ago

    tolumnia:

    Great! Someone with actual Page tree fruiting experience. How large are the fruit that you get normally? In my research, I saw 'small' often -- especially if they don't have a different cultivar to cross pollinate. However, I was assuming around 2" in diameter. I recently found a link that was talking about them being "about the size of a half-dollar or silver-dollar". That's a good bit bit less than 2".

    Here is a link that might be useful: Tantangelo Link

  • malcolm_manners
    14 years ago

    We have a couple mature 'Page' trees in the Florida Southern College arboretum. They are well-pollenized, and the fruit ranges from a few the size of a quarter, up to small orange size, maybe as much as 3" occasionally. But on average, substantially smaller than most round oranges. I would rate them up there with 'Minneola' as one of the finest-tasting of all citrus fruits.
    Malcolm

  • islandmanmitch
    14 years ago

    My Page has fruit about the size of a small tangerine. The Page and Honeybell are the top two favorites from my orchard for taste. The juice is excellent fresh squeezed but takes quite a few to fill a large glass. It needs a pollenizer and is somewhat seedy.

  • tolumnia
    14 years ago

    Most of our fruits this year were in the 3 inch diameter range, although we had a few that were about 3 and a half inches in diameter. Last year we had a lot of 2 inchers and 2 and a half inch fruits. There are a lot of possible pollinizer trees around my Pages. Some years they are a bit seedy, others years almost seedless. I rate them a lot higher than Minneola, but that is a personal choice. And sometimes the fruit are smaller, as MM says.

  • oviedo_apples
    14 years ago

    Well size aside, it seems very much that everyone is in agreement that the taste of the Page is excellent. Cool. Now I suppose I'll have to find some way to encourage my new addition to grow like the wind. Perhaps if I sing to it, it'll grow really really fast so that I'll stop. It's right beside an equally new Temple (bought specifically for a pollenizer), so hopefully the two will collaborate and it will set reasonably sized fruit... in a couple of years. *sigh*