Australian Desert Limes

How many people know that Australia has its own highly productive native citrus in citrus glauca or the desert lime?

Desert lime trees evolved and occur naturally across the challenging outback and thrive when taken to other environments withstanding both heat and frost. The ‘Abundance’ and ‘Standout’ PBR registered selections of desert lime trees made by Jock Douglas are now available to all Australian States. Their mother trees are proven high yielding fruit producers selected after six years of wild harvesting in the Maranoa district of Queensland where successive frosts in the winter and above 38° days in summer are experienced. The wonderful flavour of this native fruit had been long recognised by western Queensland and NSW pioneering families for making refreshing drinks, conserves, sauces, and aioli. Grafted Abundance and Standout desert lime trees are highly suitable as productive home garden trees and as valuable commercial producers for orchard plantings.

Fascinating facts - Desert lime trees retain interesting desert adaptation characteristics. They are the quickest citrus species in the world to set fruit after flowering with trees flowering in late August and fruit ripe in early November. Young trees in the wild protect themselves against grazing animals with sharp thorns. However, after growing above the browse height of large kangaroos the trees grow no more thorns. Propagation is from cuttings taken high in the tree that are free of thorns. Desert lime fruit has been analysed to have important health enhancing attributes with high levels of natural Vitamin C, Lutein, Folate and the antioxidant Vitamin E. Desert limes have the highest Vitamin C level of any citrus fruit.