Can You Grow a Kaffir Lime Tree by Air Layering?

by Laura Reynolds
Kaffir leaves and rinds flavor Thai soups and curries.

Kaffir leaves and rinds flavor Thai soups and curries.

Citrus trees make attractive evergreen landscape trees, and the bumpy little kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix) has distinctive fiddle-shaped leaves. The glossy green leaves cover a tree that grows to 10 feet tall in containers and to 16 feet or more outside in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 9 to 11. Because they are not self-fruiting, a pollinator from a neighbor’s tree can be started from seed or cutting.

Kaffir Lime Facts

Kaffir lime is a native of Southeast Asia. Its leaves flavor Thai soups and its rind gives body to curry pastes. The juice -- what there is of it -- is bitter and its branches bear spines. The little tree with its thick leaves and small yellow-green berries prefers tropical conditions, but tolerates a dry Mediterranean climate when given additional irrigation. In areas where winter temperatures drop below 30 degrees Fahrenheit, plants should be grown in containers so they can be moved inside. Drought or cold encourage the plant to stop production of its fragrant white flowers. Although some citrus flowers smell unpleasant, the flowers of the bitter kaffir lime smell sweet.

Vegetative Reproduction

Several propagation methods use parts of an existing plant to grow a new plant. These vegetative reproduction methods guarantee that the new plant will have the exact genetic makeup of the parent. Kaffir limes start readily from stem cuttings and grafts. Growers typically propagate kaffir limes by grafting; a bud inserted in a slice or green cutting wedged into the rootstock trunk encourages growth as a tree rather than as a shrubby tree or bush. New plants will also start from air-layered cuttings, but the extra time and effort that go into nicking, wrapping and keeping the branch damp is more trouble than simply cutting a few green branches and setting them in a potful of sterile soil until they begin sprouting roots. The wrapping used in air layering also provides an incubator for any pathogens already present on the branch.


The kaffir lime demands pollination from an unrelated plant in order to produce fruit and new plants grow readily from seed. Plants started from seed take several years to grow large enough to flower, but may not accurately reproduce the parent plant, depending on how the original blooms were pollinated. Plants reproduced by seed also tend to produce more spiny thorns than those propagated using bud grafts.


Each propagation method has its drawbacks. Any propagation strategy must involve unrelated trees or the offspring will not set fruit. Air-layered and green cuttings may carry pathogens from the parent plant to the new plant. Of special concern is the presence of the Asian citrus psyllid, which carries the pathogen huanglongbing or HLB, a greening diseases for which no cure exists. Although air layering would work as a propagation method for a kaffir lime, the preferable methods might be to start plants from bud grafts in disease-resistant rootstock or to start plants from seed.

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