Earlier Castanea pointed out his Autumn beauty’s looked like what I was calling a Winter Delight. I’m 90% sure Castanea’s ID’s are correct, & what I’ve been calling Winter Delight is in fact Autumn Beauty (Thanks Castanea!). I had ordered 1 Winter Delight & 1 Autumn Beauty from OneGreenWorld about 10 years ago, so I contacted One Green World, who hooked me up with the person responsible, who is still growing these 2 trees. Here’s what he had to say
“Thanks for writing about the Jujube fruit. I took a couple of photos yesterday and am sending them along…They ripen later here than in your location… Qi yue xian is the Chinese name of Autumn Beauty and Mango dong zao is the name of Winter Delight.”
Autumn Beauty
Winter Delight
One of the 2 trees has been very productive, the second tree almost never produced, so I thought I had 2 varieties. I sent soil from the tree that did poorly to Texas A&M, & found it was low in Nitrogen & Phosphorus. Also as the irrigation system is under the grass at the tree that did poorly, and above ground at the tree that did well, I was able to monitor watering the one tree better than the other.
there’s still a chance you might not. Still possible fruit shape may have been influenced by climate and growing conditions(as with HJ’s and some of the norris dam jujus)? I remember getting a somewhat pear-shaped fruit from your grafts which i thought was deformed but perhaps might be the archetypal shape for winter delight… Of course, my grafts are still young, so also possible the archetypal shapes/quality aren’t yet exhibited…
and even if what you have are actually both autumn beauty’s , it is now too foggy to tell what the true winter delight might be at this point, since also not impossible for the person who imported it to have been given the wrong cultivar. Shanxi li is another case, as well as jin/jin-chang, and many of the r#t# from norris dam.
Could be. I’ll carefully compare the fruit from both trees next year. Also I planted a Winter Delight from rolling river thus spring, hopefully it fruits next year
keep us posted! Will also post updates from ours here.
and if misery loves company, ogw messed up our massandra order this spring–they shipped us what seems to be another black sea
Re: jujube shape, I always wondered why Honey Jar was called that. But then I saw a picture of someones fruits which looked like honey jars in shape! Mine just look like big marbles, pretty much completely round. This is another example of shape varying by growing conditions.
couldn’t find the original jpeg so took a photo of our juju cultivar page.
you’d notice our winter d(mango dong zao) seemed deformed, appearing bell-shaped, but perhaps we were wrong about it being an aberration…
as for hj’s we’ve always had them roundish(never girdled).
Who sells the other Winter Delight and what does it look/taste like?
One Green World lists their WD as one of the earliest ripening and egg shaped, but the photo of WD they sent you has fruit that’s barrel shaped and less ripe than the egg shaped fruit in the Autumn Beauty photo. How confusing! Maybe the photos were not taken at the same time?
Just Fruits and Exotics says their Mango Dong Zho (WD) is barrel shaped and very late ripening!
My current WD is from Rolling River, which is probably the same as the OGW WD because they sell similar varieties and are both on the West coast. All this detective work is exhausting.
Has anyone picked WD fruit this year yet? How it it?
My 2 year old wd from rolling river turned out to be a Li. Normally I can count on r River.
The person who ran ogw 10 years ago imported and named and trademarked wd and a Beauty, I’d trust their trees. Even though I think their description is wrong, something must have gotten mixed up.
There really is no other WD. There is only an OGW screw-up. The first year OGW sold WD I bought two of them (and two Autumn Delight). WD produces a large, late ripening fruit that is not bad but not great. It ripens very late. In subsequent years someone from OGW messed up and apparently sold Autumn Beauty with WD name tags. Autumn Beauty produces a large early ripening fruit of very high quality.
