So I have a good lime tree in the backyard of the house I recently purchased. This thing grows like crazy.

However, these limes have an orange tint when you cut them open. Any ideas as to what these things are?

I swear I'm not being sarcastic... it might be an orange tree. My dad thought he had a lime tree and we cut up hundreds of them over the years to put in beers. One time my grandma was visiting and said "What are you doing dummy? Those oranges aren't ripe yet."

If it was a grafted tree (probably), the top stock may have died and it may have been the rootstock maybe.

Typically its some form of a trifoliate for the rootstock. Not known for making good fruit. But disease resistant root stock.

Maybe?

There are some oranges like the pineapple orange that have green skins but are ripe and orange-ish inside.

You're picking your pineapples too soon if they're still hard green like that. Give them some more time to have better than half of each fruit to be colored up before you pick them, and even then that's if you want to gas them to get full color. For personal consumption I'd wait until they got full color, they'll last on the tree for a good while after that.

OP post some pics of what you're working with. The only commercial oranges close to being ready would be navels if you've got your tree set to the right clock.

Or a Meyer Lemon? We moved into our house in July, we had a tree with terrible limes (so I thought). Left them alone and some time in winter/spring they began to look like oranges. Cut them open and souuuuur. So I went from thinking I had a lime, to thinking I had an orange, to finally learning about Meyer Lemons.

Fwiw,

We have two orange trees and a grapefruit tree in Flour Bluff. The fruit is green until it matures in the fall/winter, then it changes to the tradition orange and yellow color.

The neighbor across the street has a key lime tree and he has been giving us loads of fruit all summer when we are there.

Not sure if this will post on mobile

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/9RUP39m

Sure looks like an orange to me.

Can you get a clear pic of the skin? If it's rough and pebbly textured odds are it's a sour. If it's smooth then you're probably in luck. By size alone I'd guess it's a mid/late season orange like a Jaffa or Valencia. But then again I was looking at some pineapple and Marrs today that were as big as grapefruit.

Shape has me leaning Jaffa

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/rlGJ2A6

Another pic

That's not overly coarse hided, you might just have an immature orange. Check back in at the end of January, they should be full color by then.

That would be a crazy change.

Appreciate the input.

Our Satsumas are still green. They are just starting to turn slightly lighter. Won't be orange until mid to late October and usually are ripe around early November.

If they end up being sour oranges you can probably make some serious mojo, they are also acidic enough where you can pickle some onions in them. If they do end up being sour oranges....

Fajita that has been butterflied from a mexican meat market
Squezee some of the juice from your limes or oranges
Few dashes of jugo Maggi
Few dashes if worstershire sauce
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Onion powder

Lay another piece of meat on top and repeat. Repeat until you are out of meat. Let it sit overnight. For the love of all that is holy don't use a gas grill it simply won't get hot enough and the texture will be terrible. Grill over real mesquite or lump charcoal!

Sorry if i derailed your thread but for those that don't see value in sour oranges I seriously disagree.

For what it;'s worth I have seen lemons with a bright orange peel, like the meyers described above but I have never seen a lime with orange flesh but hell I recently saw striated lemons at HEB that had pink flesh so go figure. The important thing here is what do they taste like? By the looks of it, my money is some type of orange that has not yet matured.

Had limes that looked like that in Brazil, supposedly one of the sourest types assuming the locals knew anything accurate.

I had a Camelia that was so old it had a trunk and was more of a tree than a bush.

It had these seed pods of some sort that looked like limes although I never cut one open.

If it blooms beautifully in February you will know.

My neighbor has some kind of orange trees in her back yard. Probably 5 or so that are 20' tall. They look like limes until theyre ripe somewhere around Jan or Feb. They're all about that size right now.

I can usually get about 30-50 oranges that hang over my fence. I was annoyed when i first moved in until,i saw the yield i was getting

My lemon tree here in SA waits until about late October for them to start turning yellow. My lime (in a pot) is churning out tons of limes right now, nice yellow color and the skins are getting thin.

Damn grackles and mockingbirds did a number on the lemons this year and the crazy intermittent rains have split quite a few. I need to put some netting over it next year.

You can tell most of them by smell. All of my satsuma oranges (4 varieties) look like those pictures but smell like oranges.

quote:

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Our Satsumas are still green. They are just starting to turn slightly lighter. Won't be orange until mid to late October and usually are ripe around early November.

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This describes my orange tree.

My lime tree has a few limes but they are still immature.

My lemons are getting big but like the poster above said, they still have a few more months before they ripen.

Taste it! And report

My parents house got messed up pretty bad during hurricane rita. They sold it as is and moved to another house. Then house they bought didn't have any damage from the hurricane, but lost all the trees in the backyard. My dad had a friend that owns a nursery and gave him a handful of trees and bushes to plant at the new house. We'll my dad plants them, but only vaguely remembers what he planted. One of them he knew was a citrus tree, but couldn't remember what kind. When it starts putting out green fruit he says, "oh it must have been a lime tree". Worst limes you ever tasted, but the first couple years there were only a handful and he picked them all as they showed up. Third or fourth year there were about a hundred during the summer. They had a barbeque and he was telling a neighbor about this horid lime tree he has and doesn't know what he's going to do with it. The neighbor says he has one exactly like it, but it's a lemon tree and they don't turn ripe till Novemberish. Consequently my parents have an awesome lemon tree.