UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1215 



Washington, D. C. 



Issued April 1924, revised March 1936 



THE CHINESE JUJUBE 



By C. C. Thomas, horticulturist, Division of Plant Exploration and Introduction, 

 Bureau of Plant Industry 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Introduction 1 



Culture 3 



Climate 3 



Soil 3 



Planting 4 



Pruning 5 



Varieties 5 



Mu Shing Hong 5 



Lang 5 



Sui Men 5 



Li 7 



Page 



Propagation 7 



Seeds 7 



Cuttings 9 



Budding 9 



Grafting 9 



Suggestions for utilizing the jujube 11 



Jujube confection 11 



Miscellaneous recipes 12 



Future of the Chinese jujube 13 



INTRODUCTION 



The Chinese jujube (also known as Chinese date) is one of the 

 five principal fruits in northern China, where it has been grown 

 since ancient times. It belongs to the buckthorn family (fiham- 

 naceae) and to the genus Zizyphus Mill., of which there are about 50 

 species distributed throughout temperate and tropical regions. The 

 genus derives its name from the word " Zizouf ", the Arabic name of 

 one of the species. Three or four species of Zizyphus are native to 

 the Southwestern States and northern Mexico. All of these are 

 thorny shrubs with small fruits that are little more than skin and 

 seed. The Chinese jujube is a deciduous tree (fig. 1), rather small. 

 and somewhat spiny, with firm, shining-green, oval or oblong leaves 

 1 to 3 inches long. The fruit is a drupe, elliptic or oblong, up to 2 

 inches long, with a thin dark-brown skin when ripe, and crisp, sweet, 

 whitish flesh of applelike flavor, enclosing a hard two-celled pointed 

 stone. As a rule the jujube is a heavy bearer, and the contrast of the 

 smooth, dark-brown fruits with the glossy green foliage makes the 

 tree decidedly ornamental. 



^ The Chinese jujube was cultivated in northern China many centu- 

 ries before the beginning of the Christian Era. A Chinese work. 

 Pen Tsao Kang Mu, published 300 years ago by Li Shi Chen, listed 

 43 named varieties: hundreds are described in the more recent work. 

 It is now widely distributed, extending from northern and central 



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