rough lemon

noun

1. a variety of lemon that has orange-yellow, rough-skinned fruit and is used as a rootstock for the cultivation of other citrus fruits.

Word History and Origins

Origin of rough lemon¹

First recorded in 1895–1900

Example Sentences

Plant a lime seed and up comes a kumquat, or, with equal odds, a Seville orange, not to mention a rough lemon or a tangerine.

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“This part of the tree is called the rootstock. It is the root and trunk of a rough lemon tree. Believe it or not, every type of tree that we produce here begins its life as a rough lemon tree.”

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“The rough lemon is totally worthless in the supermarket, and yet there is no more valuable tree out here in the nursery.”

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“If you look out here, you’ll see that all of these trees are the same. On each there is one scion grafted onto a rough lemon rootstock That scion is a new type of tangerine called the Golden Dawn.”

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“If we don’t, the Golden Dawns are dead, and we got ourselves a thousand rough lemon trees.”

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