This store requires javascript to be enabled for some features to work correctly.
Proof that life’s sharp moments can still be wonderfully sweet 💛
Family: Rutaceae · Pot diameter: 12cm · Height: approximately 25–30cm
Citrus × limon ‘Meyer’ Lisa is the compact potted lemon that makes a bright terrace feel instantly more generous. Its richly scented white flowers become rounded fruit with thin yellow-orange rind, abundant juice and softer acidity than an ordinary lemon. A compact evergreen crown, purple tints on young flower buds and repeated flowering flushes make it delightful even between harvests.
Choose it when you want a genuine Meyer in a compact ornamental form, letting fruit colour fully on the crown for its characteristically rounder flavour.
Lisa combines recognisable Meyer character with a small young form whose development is easy to follow.
Ripe fruit remains distinctly lemony, but the acidity is rounder with a subtle mandarin-like perfume.
Buds may be purple outside and open into white flowers with a sweet citrus fragrance.
Young Lisa fits easily now, then builds a dense productive form after sensible potting-on without hurried pruning.
Why you will love it: It delivers the complete lemon experience—flower, fragrance, colour and juice—in a compact potted plant you can know from a very young stage.
It needs at least six hours of direct sun and free air movement. In summer avoid positions where glass or masonry traps excessive heat around the small root system.
Fragrant foliage, low flowers and small fruit make a calm edible composition around the lemon.
Full sun, introduced gradually after winter so tender leaves do not scorch.
Maintain even moisture during growth, allowing the surface to dry slightly between waterings.
Protect from frost and cold wind; a bright position at roughly 5–12°C supports safe overwintering.
Use only fully ripe, well-washed fruit and wash the rind before cooking with it.
Wait until new growth firms, then move up only one pot size into aerated citrus compost.
Water until it drains below, then water again once the top layer dries. Never leave standing water in the saucer.
Apply a complete citrus feed from the start of spring growth according to its label, stopping when light levels fall markedly.
Ventilate on mild days or pass a soft brush from flower to flower when pollinating insects are absent.
If many young fruit gather on a thin branch, retain the best placed and let the crown support fresh foliage.
Yellow veins or general pallor call for checks of pH, drainage and feeding before adding more fertiliser at random.
It is self-fertile, so one plant is sufficient. Insects or a small brush improve pollen transfer when flowering takes place under cover.
Fruit needs many months and is ready when evenly yellow-orange, fragrant and just yielding slightly to pressure.
Clip with small clean scissors while supporting the fruit in the other hand. Do not pull, as thin rind and branch damage easily.
The juice has rounder acidity, while the thin fragrant rind suits baking, drinks and finely grated zest.
In permanent pot culture: A small potted plant can carry fruit, but not a fixed number; natural drop sheds part of the load when light, water or roots cannot support it.
Late winter after cold risk has passed, or immediately after harvest
Keep Lisa low and rounded without removing flowering tips wholesale. Clear a sucker or rubbing branch and, after fruiting, return only the longest shoot within the outline.
Action: Remove only a shoot below the graft or a broken tip.
Retain: Retain all healthy new growth that feeds the roots.
Action: Remove one thin inward branch that rubs another.
Retain: Retain three to five outer branches at different angles.
Action: After harvest, cut the longest shoot above an outward lateral within the maintained range.
Retain: Retain short tips carrying blossom or fruit and the naturally uneven curve.
Use sharp, clean tools suited to the diameter of the wood.
Do not water over the cuts, and wait for new growth before making another correction.
Do not do this: Do not remove buds and short tips because the crown looks small; much of the next blossom is carried there.
The small crown retains existing leaves and settles its water balance before a new flush.
Short outward shoots fill the rounded outline without rapidly increasing height.
Blossom and fruit appear on a compact evergreen crown maintained with a few targeted cuts.
Lisa is maintained low and dense, with short flowering tips around a bright rounded crown.
Meyer can naturally grow larger; this is the practical permanent-pot form kept compact without shearing.
What to expect in its pot: The small crown retains existing leaves and settles its water balance before a new flush.
In the early twentieth century, plant explorer Frank N. Meyer travelled through China for the United States Department of Agriculture. Near Beijing he encountered an unusually compact lemon, probably of old hybrid origin, grown in pots and courtyards.
In 1908 he sent propagation material to the United States. The plant took his name and differed from commercial lemons through its smaller crown, thin yellow-orange rind and milder aromatic juice.
Lisa is the commercial name under which Citrina now offers this Meyer for small spaces. It is not a separately documented cultivar: behind the product name remains the historic ‘Meyer’, supplied in a young form selected for home growing.
Meyer can accumulate anthocyanins in young shoots and on the outer face of flowers. These pigments act as an optical screen in tender tissues.
Its ancestry combines lemon with mandarin-like citrus material, helping explain the rounder acidity, orange-toned ripe colour and different aroma.
Six practical answers about permanent pot culture, fruiting, winter care and compact pruning for this exact citrus.
Lisa is the product name; the documented cultivar identity is ‘Meyer’.
No. It is self-fertile and one plant can crop provided pollen moves between flowers.
That depends on maturity, light and overwintering. A young plant may need time before carrying a normal crop.
Yes. Move up only one pot size when roots fill it and maintain the crown at roughly 55–85cm with light selective pruning.
When evenly yellow-orange, strongly fragrant and yielding very slightly without becoming soft.
Only after cold weather or after harvest, removing suckers, damage and one genuinely congested twig.
