It’s finger lime season. Finger limes are an Australian native citrus, indigenous to the Queensland and NSW coast. The fruits are small, about the size of my little finger and when cut open reveal beads of citrussy goodness. The insides can be a range of colours; white, red and green. Mine are pink.
They grow on bushy plants that can get up to 7 metres tall. Fortunately mine is still on the small size at about a metre. The plants are incredibly prickly and harvesting the fruit can be a painful experience. Sometimes I let gravity do its work and harvest them from the ground to avoid the scratches.
I haven’t had any real issues with my plant. Ironically the gall wasps (a native insect that traditionally feeds on finger limes) seems to prefer my lemon tree, and nothing else seems to bother it. My plant doesn’t even get sun in winter, it’s quite near the house which shades it when the sun isn’t as high in the sky. It seems happy enough though, happy enough to give decent amounts of fruit anyway.
