Fortunella japonica
Encyclopedia
Citrus japonica 'Japonica' (common name: Marumi Kumquat or Morgani Kumquat) is a species of Kumquat
Kumquat
Cumquats or kumquats are a group of small fruit-bearing trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae, either forming the genus Fortunella, or placed within Citrus sensu lato...

. It is an evergreen
Evergreen
In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...

 tree. It produces edible golden-yellow colored fruit. The fruit is small and usually round but can be oval shaped. The peel has a sweet flavor but the fruit has a sour center. The fruit can be eaten raw and but mainly used to make marmalade and jelly. It is grown as an ornamental plant
Ornamental plant
Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

 and can be used in bonsai
Bonsai
is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers. Similar practices exist in other cultures, including the Chinese tradition of penjing from which the art originated, and the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese hòn non bộ...

. This plant is symbolized as good luck and are presented during the Chinese new year. It's more commonly cultivated than most other kumquats as it is cold tolerant. It can be kept as a houseplant
Houseplant
A houseplant is a plant that is grown indoors in places such as residences and offices. Houseplants are commonly grown for decorative purposes, positive psychological effects, or health reasons such as indoor air purification...

.

Carl Peter Thunberg
Carl Peter Thunberg
Carl Peter Thunberg aka Carl Pehr Thunberg aka Carl Per Thunberg was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. He has been called "the father of South African botany" and the "Japanese Linnaeus"....

 originally classified the kumquats as members of the citrus genus in 1784 in his book Flora Japonica. They were moved to a new genus, Fortunella, in 1915 by Walter T. Swingle
Walter Tennyson Swingle
Walter Tennyson Swingle was an American agricultural botanist who was born in Canaan, Pennsylvania and moved with his family to Kansas two years later. He graduated from the Kansas State Agricultural College in 1890, and studied in Bonn in 1895-96 and 1898...

 in honor of Robert Fortune. In accordance with the 1994 Tokyo Code of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, the genus name reverted to Citrus.

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