Since I realized 2-3 years ago that lack of water is the primary cause of premature fruit shriveling in jujubes, my Li no longer has shriveled fruit, so shriveling absolutely is not a drawback of this variety. I have always had years when the fruit on Li matured just fine and other years when it did not and I didn’t know why. I have been growing jujubes for about 25 years and never knew why some trees had shriveled fruit in some years and not in others. I’ve had the problem at one time or another in probably every single variety of the 40-50 varieties I grow. I no longer have it in any of them.
Growers typically think that because their jujube tree shows no signs of needing water that it doesn’t need more water. They see that the leaves are not drooping or that there are no sunburned leaves and think that it doesn’t need more water. This is where it’s important to understand date palms. Date palms can stay alive in very hot temperatures with a certain amount of water, but to properly mature fruit, they need a lot more water. Jujubes are exactly the same in that respect. Jujubes are tough trees that will prioritize staying alive over setting or maturing fruit. Jujubes set massive loads of fruit and every single fruit increases the water needs of the tree. If they don’t have enough water they will not mature fruit correctly.
The fact that @c5tiger’s Sugar Cane does not have shriveling means that his Sugar Cane has enough water. Two completely different trees can have differing needs for water. Li typically sets larger fruit than Sugar Cane and it needs a lot of water when that fruit is in the latter stages of ripening. My Li typically also sets more fruit than Sugar Cane. Sugar Cane typically matures fruit earlier in the season than Li when it may be warmer or drier. The bottom line is that they are two different trees. Saying that both trees need exactly the same amount of water is like saying that two different teenagers need exactly the same amount of food.
