JUJUBE TREE BEARING BEFORE ONE YEAR OLD 



A young jujube yilant in nursery row, produced from a bench graft of January, 1917. This 

 small tree less than a year old is bearing a very good crop of fine large fruit. This plant is 

 especially interesting for the reason that the fruit is borne on hard wood branches that are not 

 deciduous; while generally on older trees the fruit is born on slender deciduous branches 

 of the current '-.eason's growth. Photograph by P. H. Dorsett, Oct. 1917. Chico gardens. 

 (Fig. 2.) 



ous attention of horticulturists. With 

 the bearing in this country of the large 

 fruited Chinese varieties, which were in- 

 troduced in 1906, the jujube appears in 

 quite a different light — one worthy of 

 the serious considcraton of amateur and 

 practical horticulttu'ists living in those 

 regions where they can be grown suc- 

 cessfully. 



The claims of this new fruit tree may 

 be briefly stated as follows, judging from 

 the limited experience which this Office 

 has had with it in various parts of the 

 country, but without any pretence of 

 being a complete statement of its possi- 

 bilities, of which it is one of the objects 

 of the distribution of plants to find out: 



The jujube is a medium-sized spiny 

 tree which grows to be forty or more 

 years old. Its rate of growth depends 

 upon the climate in which it is grown. 



In New England, or regions with cool 

 summers, it makes a very slow growth; 

 whereas in northern California, where 

 the thermometer goes to 120°F., it grows 

 rapidly. No weather appears to be too 

 hot for it, and so far as resistance to cold 

 is concerned, it has withstood tempera- 

 tures of 22° F. below zero without injury. 

 Just how much lower winter tempera- 

 tures it will withstand, has not yet been 

 determined. The range of territory, 

 however, over which it is likely to ]orove 

 a success as a fruit tree, will be jirobably 

 limited more by the waiTnth and length 

 of the summer season than by the sever- 

 ity of the winter. The whole sotithwest, 

 with the excci)tion of the elevated areas 

 where cold summer nights occur and 

 those portions of the Mississippi X'alley, 

 where the humidity and rainfall are not 

 too great, as well as the drier portions 



