Changsha Mandarin - Cold Hardy and Sweet
Changsha mandarin is an old Chinese mandarin that has a long history in the South. It is a fairly common dooryard citrus, especially along the Gulf coast, and qualifies as both an heirloom plant and a "passalong" plant. Passalong plants are those that were commonly propagated and "passed along" neighbor to neighbor in the South before large nurseries and big box stores were common.
Changsha made a great passalong plant because it grows easily from seed and can grow well on its own roots. Although Changsha, like many citrus, is polyembryonic and produces seedlings that are mostly identical to the parent, small variations in seedlings produced a class of citrus rather than a single type. So it's not unusual to find dooryard Changsha mandarins that vary somewhat in taste and habit - some trees are strongly upright (which is the type), others weep much like Satsuma; some produce fruit that can be dry and bland, others produce fruit that is as good as any other mandarin or tangerine.
The fruit of a Changsha is like many other mandarins - easy to peel, with bright orange peel and fruit. When peeled, the rind has a "skunky" odor unique to Changsha, but this odor is not imparted to the taste of the fruit. It is an early ripening variety, often reaching full flavor by mid-October. Fruit in general do not hold well on the tree (similar to Satsuma), and will become dry and puffy if not picked soon after ripening. Once picked, fruit store well in the refrigerator for quite some time.
Individual trees can produce fruit of varying quality; some trees have fruit that are always dry and somewhat bland, while others produce fruit that are deliciously sweet to sweet and rich. For this reason, it's worth the effort to seek out better trees - if you can find them.
One characteristic common to all Changsha is its seediness. Each fruit contains eight sections, and each section has between one and three seeds - so each Changsha fruit can contain 24 or more seeds. That's a lot of seeds for a fruit about 3 inches in diameter. This characteristic, along with varying quality, has prevented Changsha from becoming a commercial fruit.
Despite these limitations, Changsha offers those of us north of the citrus belt a sweet, dessert-type fruit that is also amazingly cold hardy - one I have been growing in Greene County, GA, endured 11F in 2014 with no damage other than minor leaf drop. The same temperatures in December 2022 caused the loss of wood that was 1" in diameter or less, probably because that freeze was accompanied by ferocious winds that dessicated evergreen foliage of many kinds of plants.
The number of mandarins currently being offered by nurseries in Georgia has grown exponentially in the past five years. These should be tried wherever citrus can be grown. However, Changsha is tried and true and, in my opinion, should be grown wherever it is hardy.
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