Saturday Spotlight – Finger Limes

There is a great deal I don’t know about the plant I am spotlighting this week but as I have just had my first harvest I am keen to share it with the world.

These are Finger Limes:

Finger Limes (Citrus australasica) are, as their botanical name suggests, a native Australian citrus.  They grow on thorny bushes which can grow up to 10 metres high according to Daley’s informative website.  Daley’s are a fruit tree supplier in New South Wales but I acquired my plant from my parents who it bought it from Vaughans Australian Plants who are outside Geelong.  Unfortunately the label just calls the plant ‘finger lime’ so I’m not sure which variety I have.  What I do know is that, currently mine is happy in a 30cm pot and is only about 1 metre high (and half of that height is one branch which only recently shot up).  I think the plant is probably about 4 years old.  My parents had it for two years during which it looked very unhappy in their cooler climate in the Macedon Ranges (which does get frost).  I acquired it two years ago, potted it up from a 15cm to a 30cm pot at that point and it has lived in that pot ever since.  I feed it 6 monthly with Osmocote for citrus and that is about it, although I do give it the occasional feed of fish emulsion.  My plant started flowering over summer and subsequently set its first fruit.  I picked 4 today and it has another 8 left on it.

The plants are incredibly prickly with small skinny foliage.  The flowers on my plant are pink and the fruit started out green and then changed to a darker browny colour as they ripened.

The ripe fruit are about as thick as my finger but only about 3/4 of its length.  Inside each fruit there are tiny pale pink balls:

which taste like a cross between lemon/lime and grapefruit to my palate.  They are sour but good and I think they would give salad dressing an amazing taste and texture.  The little balls kind of burst when you eat them.  I am going to have a lot of fun experimenting with them I have to say.

Have you eaten finger limes?  If so what did you do with them?

Saturday Spotlight is a series of posts highlighting particular varieties of edible plants.  If you have a favourite, or even a less than successful variety of a plant and would like to include it in the series then please leave a comment with a link below.    I have created a page (above, just below the header) with an Index of all the Spotlights to date.   I will add links to any new posts below and in next weeks post as well as ensuring they appear in the Index.  

New Spotlights last week were:

Summer Perfection Spinach – From Seed to Table

Red Ursa Kale – Our Happy Acres

and from this week:

 Pea Eggplant – Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girls

Cream Garlic – My Little Garden Project