women outlive men by leaps and bounds, so that’s an ace up your sleeve 
quite likely you’re right, especially at the braid’s age. I surmise though will ultimately assume the concentric inner heartwood and outer sapwood typical of ‘normal’ trunks as the braid gets much older
BTW Raf, we will be checking out the decades’ old Jujube tree at UNLV next week. Excited to see what an old Juju looks like in person!
vegas glitzy, forgot to post this last year. Fruits are still on the small side(first fruits on a recent graft), hoping they get bigger with time. I liked it for its unusually waxy dates.
just like eating a piece of honeycomb. But unlike honeycomb that is soaked in thick honey, this one is more like beeswax drenched in light maple syrup 
That is really interesting - waxy dates.
tropical jujubes(mauritiana species) at 9$/lb, which is 3$ more expensive per lb than the winter(dongzao) jujubes i posted earlier. At least as juicy and sweet as dongzao, and the fruits are bigger too, but dongzao and other temperate cultivars (sihong, chico, etc)are so much better in flavor and eating quality in my opinion. One of the few instances when a tropical species is subpar to a temperate species
nonetheless happy to see these were produced in usa, if you can read the label on the price tag. Probably shipped from hawaii, florida, or puerto rico, hence the cost.
They are expensive here, too. I don’t think they are that sweet. They ( more known by Indian jujubes) are definitely juicy but lack flavor and aroma the Chinese jujubes have.
yeah, much as i give mauritianas a second and third, or even fourth and fifth try, i have yet to be convinced there might be a tropical juju cultivar that can approximate the quality of temperate jujus.
there will be believers and deniers of global warming, but if there are a couple issues that can’t be denied and quite tangible- desertification and deforestation would be it. Forest fires(be it caused by man–by accident or intentional-- or caused by lightning)make things worse…
anyone here from Romania? Or know of anyone influential in Romanian government? Video below featured “chinese dates” being grown there in massive scale as a two-pronged approach to produce food whilst also ameliorating desertification. Would love to donate some vegas-grown jujus to their cause. More wonderful if they can some day establish food forests of jujus growing on their own roots
here’s a Korean approach. I didn’t understand a word in this video, but it is obvious they have their jujus managed with Samsung precision
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOreEwCkK1c
I’m not sure about that. I noticed people from few European countries but not from Romania. By the way thanks for the video. I didn’t know that something like that is happening in my neighbourhood. Romania is neighbouring country to me. I don’t know anyone from there, unfortunately. Those areas on video are close to the Bulgarian border, maybe someone here from Bulgaria knows someone. I know 2 members from here that are from Bulgaria. It will be good to make some contact with Romanians.
hopefully be able to contact someone there. Desertification and food security are serious stuff, so a long-lived/pesticide-free/drought-tolerant/ self-rooted/suckering and fruit-bearing perennial is clearly a promising option. If some of us here complain about wild-type juju rootstock being ‘invasive’ with suckers, well, in many areas of mother earth subject to desertification–invasiveness of juju roots and suckers would be extremely valuable in controlling erosion and in holding sandy soil together , while the leaf-litter will increase organic matter and production of humus. As soon as juju suckers produce thickets of trees with sizeable canopies, will also serve as wind-barriers to minimize desert sand getting blown away…
jujus aren’t just a more nutritious alternative and low-maintenance option to conventional fruits, but are also one of the few options where conventional fruits can’t possibly be grown.
and that is my juju rant for the day. Quite certain i’ve reached or surpassed my quota 
nice narrative on this online nursery which never heard about which @Anne mentioned at another thread. Quite intriguing and mysterious, as they’ve been doing it for ~30 yrs, and in Michigan, of all places! Have to say any success have been having here where am at don’t mean much, considering the -20F winters up there…
https://oikostreecrops.com/products/tree-crop-trees/jujube/?sort=pd.name&order=ASC&limit=100
I have heard of Oikos nursery for many years but did not know it sells jujubes. I read the description of the seedlings they sell. I still was not sure how the fruit taste. Did I miss that part.
Interesting that they think it takes 2 years to germinate seeds
that is the mysterious part of it @mamuang, was hoping they’d mention quality of the fruit, and if(over the years) they have identified and cloned the better-tasting seed-grown specimens by root cuttings/suckers.
since they’ve proved hardiness to their region, using them as rootstock would be an alternative source of fruit since if any of less-hardy grafts dieback, at least the rootstock would still produce quality fruit
makes me think they were sowing the uncracked pits, and not the pips within the pits… Could also be a weather related thing if they were doing it outdoors and in cool-shaded conditions.
they also mentioned bearing fruit taking 4 years to 6 years, but evidently a local, or more accurately-- locale-- thing…
had jujus bear fruits within 6 months of sowing seeds(actual pips, that is). But i can’t really gloat about it since vegas has the glaring advantage of warm weather and 300+ days/yr of cloudless skies over the vast desert expanse, with no surrounding trees to cast shade on seedlings. The lucky jujube brat that i am, lol
I don’t have a lot of experience with this, but I simply took a wild fruit that laid on my counter all fall/winter/spring, cleaned off the flesh, and soaked it in water for a day or two (I wish I would have taken notes because my memory is horrible!!!), potted it without cracking, and it grew just fine. I think it would have grown better had it not been in a pot. I thought I would try it again this year with more seeds and see what sort of success I get. It seemed like they might be fairly easy to germinate?
juju pits vary in shell thickness between cultivars, and even among a bunch taken from the same juju cultivar. Some will crack sooner and some will be less impervious to moisture. Moisture also plays a part in warping the woody shell, much like lumber will twist and crack when moistened, then dried repeatedly.
other than delays in germination, the other issue with germinating from pits is that the leaf-cotyledons sometimes get caught in the half-shells or partly opened shells. The tight-helmeted seedlings’ leaf-growth get compromised in the process.and won’t be able to photosynthesize. Removing the helmets can be tricky, as may result in decapitating the apical nodes, or tear off the tender foliage.
it is our long winter that is abnormal. Nice picture btw, when did you take that photo? Our jujus are still snoozing. We usually start grafting around mid feb to late feb… Both 2019-20 and 2020 -21 winters have been unusually long… It is beginning to hurt my feelings lol
