He calls a big pummelo tree "my money tree." It makes the biggest fruit of all and Panzarella sells them for $3 each at a farmer's market in Houston. Find the best pizza in Houston at these supreme pizzerias.Stroud? Most likely QB to fall to Houston Texans How a tiny Texas town set the stage for one the biggest Oscars battles ever.Houston Texans add familiar face at QB as free agency begins.Gigantic Valentine's Day asteroid could strike Earth in 2046, NASA says.Houston, Harris County in for strong storms as Rodeo nears end.Will Ferrell, Harper Steele get awkward reaction at Texas restaurant."It has no seeds and no juice," Panzarella said. Most of his trees produce good fruit, but one, the Buddhist Hand, makes a fruit that looks like it has long, crooked fingers and is just for show. "They call it a Brazilian orange so I call it my Brazilian Sicilian." The little tree brings special memories because it's from a tree he found growing near the place his father was born. "Here's an orange I got in Sicily," he said. His trees have ancestry from all over the world. He gave them each his name and now they are growing in home orchards in many parts of Texas. The lemon usually grows in bunches of six fruit that can often total 10 pounds, he said. What their parents were, he doesn't know, but the horticultural accident produced a seedy orange that makes so much juice that one fruit can sometimes fill up a glass. Meanwhile, a lemon and an orange tree came up voluntarily beside each other in his compost pile. "It took me 12 years to find out it didn't work," he said. He carefully crossed a sweet lemon with a grapefruit and got something that tasted terrible. Some of Panzarella's trees are ordinary, many are rare and two - an orange tree that grows grapefruit-sized fruit and a lemon that is even bigger - are named for him.Ībout 15 years ago Panzarella set out to hybridize his own citrus creation. "I have room to plant all of mine in the ground." "He has more varieties than I do, but mine are bigger," Sommerfrucht said. , who maintains his own citrus collection on six acres north of Brownsville. "Citrus grows best just as far north as it can without freezing," said his friend He found that citrus loved to grow in his yard - which is along Oyster Creek. Panzarella, a retired chemical engineer, turned to citrus after unsuccessfully growing peaches, pecans and apples. The money from the tree sales, he said, helps offset his costs of finding new varieties to grow. "I grow most of them in pots because I don't have enough room to grow them in the ground," he said.įor the past 15 years he's held an open house in his 3/4 -acre backyard each December to give visitors a chance to see his collection, taste 50 to 60 different varieties of fruit and, if they want, purchase some of his trees. It is the largest collection of citrus varieties in Texas north of the Rio Grande Valley. Almost 200 different varieties produce everything from marble-sized kumquats to bowling ball-sized pummelos, the ancestor of grapefruit. Hidden behind his home on an ordinary Lake Jackson street is one of the state's most diverse collection of citrus trees.
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