Verna Lemon

We are confronted with a variety of unknown origin, possibly having been obtained in Murcia based on the italian variety Monachello. Regarding its properties, its skin is somewhat thick, it contains less juice, has a more ovoid shape and in its interior we find only three or four seeds.

It is the most extended variety in Spain, and it presents an intense yellow color.

The Verna lemon tree normally goes through two flowerings each year, although in some occasions it can be extended to three, which are in Spring and Summer, being it possible in Automn as well, but through forced flowering.

The Verna lemon of the third harvest is known as rodrejo lemon.

Botanical characters

• Leaf with a sharp tip and closed edges; isolated leafstalk, inserted articulally with the leaf margin.
• Hermafrodite or estaminated flower, by pistil abortion; violet petals on the external part, and white on the internal; free or fused in sheafs stames; ovoid ovary on a prominent disc; thick and deciduous style.
• Ovoid fruit, with a great size and a prominent base; fine or wrinkled peel, of yellow color when the fruit is ripe, provided with abundant oil-bearing glands.

Commercial and industrial interest characteristics

• Size of the fruits is variable: diameter, 60’6 mm.; height, 86’7 mm.; diameter/height relation (D/H), 0’7; medium values, all of them.
• The thickness of the peel oscillates between 3 and 11 mm.
• Its number of sections is of 9 in average for each unit.
• Its pulp is juicy, being its acidity of 55 g. of citric acid per litre approximately. The “rodrejos” have a finer skin, less thicker than those of the Spring flowering.

Fructification

The Verna lemon, the most extended variety in our region flowers extemporally when, passed a certain period of lethargy, it goes back to finding favorable conditions to its development. Lethargy in citrics is produced, under normal circumstances, because of inadecuate temperatures or because of lack of humidit. Temperatures above 36º C and inferior to 12º C causing the latency of the citrics; on the contrary, the optimal development happens with temperatures between 22 and 33ºC.

The italian technique of forced production, “verdelli” (our rodrejo), is based precisely in causing the lemon tree’s lethargy in Summer, by means of a 30-40 days drought, which goes from June to the end of July or the beginning of August; then they are fertilized and treated with four waterings following each other with intervals of 3-4 days, using smaller volumes of water for irrigation in the first watering than half of a normal irrigation, and increasing gradually this quantity of water, in order for it to become half of the ordinary quantity by the fourth watering; this way, proggresively, we achieve a watering with normal flow and intervals.