If you ever get invited to Muriel (Sam) Coatti’s house for any kind of lemon delicacy, go! For when it comes to lemons, we’re talking sunroom to table from a tree that in its heyday would produce well over three dozen lemons a harvest.
Sam Coatti’s beautiful Ponderosa lemon tree stands tall.
How, you may ask, did this Ponderosa lemon tree end up in Coatti’s possession? Well, back more than 50 years ago when Harold Remington was the town clerk, he brought some seeds back from a tree he had in Florida and grew one in his greenhouse. He loved that tree and delighted in distributing its lemons to town hall workers, who in turn were delighted to receive them.
With a population of just over 8,500 in 1972, everybody knew everybody and Remington’s penchant for giving his abundant lemons away became well known. So fond of this tree was he, that when he died in 1978, Judy Remington, his daughter in law and Assistant Town Clerk, asked Sam, who also worked for the town as Registrar of Voters, if she would have a place for it. Coatti, who lives on Russell Avenue in a house built in 1778 and added to in 1820, was in the process of adding a sunroom and agreed to take it. Fortunately, she had decided to have a brick floor in the room and so was able to remove some bricks and plant the Ponderosa lemon tree in the middle of the room in the ground. And lest you think this sunroom is in an out-of-the-way part of the house, I will tell you that it is smack dab in what used to be the front entrance to the house. You have to walk by it to get from the kitchen to almost anywhere else in the house.
The Ponderosa lemon is called the “King of Lemons” or “Giant Citron” and the tree can reach 12-14 feet at maturity. It has long evergreen glossy leaves that are lemon scented, and its fruit can measure up to six inches in diameter. It is great for juicing as its very thick skin helps retain more juice than a normal lemon would, but it is very acidic. Coatti reports that she juices and zests the lemons and keeps both in the freezer. Shortly after receiving the tree, the house was damaged by the tornado in 1979, and the sunroom’s glass roof was blown off. It was replaced with a peaked ceiling with skylights on both sides and windows all around the room. It is a lovely addition to the house and when the tree flowers, Coatti says that the fragrance is wonderful.
“My kids used to call it the “bonk tree” both for the sound the lemons made hitting the floor and their heads,” chuckled Coatti.
The 12-foot tree used to have a set schedule blossoming in January after which the fruit would come out and take months to grow and ripen but now Coatti says it seems to be more continual with blossoming again in early summer and repeating the cycle. Fewer lemons (about 15 a year) are produced now that the tree is older, but a depiction of it, reminiscent of its more plentiful days, was painted on the sunroom wall by Cindy Tower, an artist friend, in gratitude for Coatti letting her store paintings in her barn.
Because the tree is in the ground, it does not need to be watered but it is not without the need for care. It can be susceptible to scale or an infestation of aphids and since there is a roof over its head, it must be pruned back from the top. It’s a job but fortunately, Coatti has had Master Gardening training. The tree has now been in the house for almost 50 years and stands as a lovely remembrance of not only friendship but a long ago tradition.