Jujube Trees

Jujube seedlings were brought into the United States in the 1830s but very few improved jujube selections were available until Frank N. Meyer, researcher at the Chico, CA., research station began importing commercial cultivars in 1908. The Chinese cultivars were given simple names like Mu, So, and also the Li and Lang that are important commercial jujube tree producers in California, New Mexico, and Arizona, mostly desert areas where jujubes thrive for fresh jujube products and dried jujube fruits.

Jujube trees are one of the rare, exceptional fruit trees that will grow well in salty soils and are salt water tolerant when planted in coastal areas. Jujubes also grow well in extremely alkaline soils, such as in soils with high pH's of 8, like those in West Texas. Very good yield results come from Eastern and Southern U.S. plantings. Few fruit trees are as easy to grow in such wide, variable conditions as jujube trees that are so cold hardy they have thrived in states like Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana for over 100 years.

Some mature jujube cultivars may reach 30 feet tall, but pruning is preferable to make large crop production and easier harvesting possible. In Israel and Mexico jujubes are pruned back to 7-8 feet where single tree fruit production can reach up to 100 pounds per tree.

Jujube trees are necessarily grafted, because the seed on most cultivars are sterile, and unless root cuttings could be obtained from the original mother tree in China which is impracticable and virtually impossible doing that is unproductive. Grafting jujubes is performed on seedling rootstock to clones of preferred cultivars.

The jujube wild seedling rootstock produces small fruits in clusters by the hundreds that taste sour and widely sought after, as a medicine in China, and the fruits produce viable seed, used to produce more rootstocks. These plants are excellent pollinators, even though most jujube cultivars are self fruitful, and horticulturalists recommend planting two different cultivars for cross pollination for the maximum fruit production.

Jujube flowers are fragrant, small and green, and fruit production usually begins in July and extends into October in Georgia. The fruit becomes tasty, sweet and commercially ready to harvest when it changes from green to yellow in color, and then the picking of the jujubes begins after the red blotches begin to appear. The sweetest fruit forms when allowed to ripen on the tree and then to turn completely red, but the grocery store shelf life is a very short, few days when picked in the yellow-red blotch stage, and in the South the jujubes should be picked before turning completely red in color. Very few animals will bother jujubes, if the fruits are picked before the red stage is completed, and if left on the tree to ripen in the South, the high concentration of sugar that is formed within the jujubes attracts fire ants, bees and yellow jackets who will make the harvesting painful to you, if you fight them for the fruit.

If jujubes are picked at the proper stage of yellow-red blotches, then afterwards, the sugar development intensifies, and can dramatically increase the sugar content to 85%, especially in some cultivars like the cultivar called, “sugar cane”.

Thorns on most cultivars of Jujube trees will usually disappear on jujube trees as the trees age, and the heavy bark increases in size and dislodges the thorns.

Jujube trees in the Western States and have been commercially productive for over 50 years, and the production records in China show that the jujube tree called, “Jujube King” that is growing in a southern province is over 1000 years old.