Certainly one cautionary lesson to draw from the photos (besides that some people just should not plant fruit trees) is that you are more likely to be able to care for a tree properly if you don't let it get much taller than you are.

What kind of kumquat (round/sweet? or oval/tart)? That is a lot of heartburn there!!

Oh man I dont know!!! The kumquats are everywhere around here! Both kinds. I used to climb them when I was a kid and eat them until I was sick and my hands would be stained orange! We would spit the seeds at each other from the branches. We never went hungry during summer break.

The thing is, I dont know if its considered a "status" thing around here in the Asian community to have very large trees or if people are just lazy. I think its a mixture of both because most of the fruit ends up on the ground. The trees are so large that you would need a ladder just to pick the low hanging fruit!! That was just one street on a 5 minute ride. All on the same side mostly. If I went around just one block I could fill a whole website with pics. Some people take better care but most are 20' plus tree that are WILD. Most with PLC. I swear HLB will hit here soon (god forbid)

Oh I was thinking about Loquat sorry!!! I always get those things confused. The loquats grow wild here.

The kumquat is oval tart. It is VERY tart when you bite into is but sweet at the same time but I do know it is oval. It is more tart then sweet though. I eat those things sometimes whole. One time I made juice out of a bag of them. OH MAN!! Its my friends tree and is probably one of the nicest in the neighborhood. During Tet new year every person who is not from around here wants to stop and take a picture in front of it and buy fruit. The area by the sidewalk is picked clean by the end of the new year (Chinese)

Thanks for the pics... makes me kind of miss Southern California though!

I'll just play the devil's advocate with a reminder that not all fruit trees need to be "taken care of". I should post some pics of the many huge ancient apricot and apple trees that are growing wild around here and continue to flower and fruit profusely without ever having been pruned. You sure do need a ladder to harvest from them though...

Thanks again blaze

Yeah I understand but the trees around here definitely need help...hehehe

I would say %75 of the trees I see are overgrown, have at least one disease, never pruned, full of mummified fruit, surrounded on the ground by dead black sticky fruit, too high to even pick fruit, majority twigs from lack of pruning and disease (or bugs). The ones that do have decent fruit is rarely picked and ends up falling and dieing or rotting on the tree. Most stone fruits around here flower great but the fruit rarely make it to full ripe and if they do they are small and abundant(not thinned properly). Some dont even flower and the PLC is SERIOUS. Ill try to get some pics of the trees with PLC BAD!

I understand about some trees that dont need to be taken care of but there are none around here. And if they are, they are swamped by the ones that do need care...lol

Trust me. I can take pics all day. But the funny things is you will see 5 bad yards full of crap trees (that would be beautiful if properly taken care of) then all of a sudden you see a nice yard with awesome trees. You can really tell who knows their trees and who is either lazy, too old, just doesnt care, unable to take care of them, or just doesnt know how.

It just started to get like this within the past 15 years. In the late 80's and early 90's it was somewhat of a adventure to hunt down the good trees. Then all of a sudden it seems like the last decade had an explosion of trees. Maybe they just got out of hand and the homeowner is a victim and prisoner of their own trees...lol