Or sport (bud mutation)?
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that is a possibility, especially if cuttings were treated with hormones/biologic agents. The species has been found responsive to all sorts of biochemicals, including gout medication which produced polyploid version of maya zao . And even in absence of deliberate lab approach-- jujubes, simply due to the species being extremely long-lived-- increases their chances of mutation.
HeLa cells obtained from a patient with cervical cancer in early 1950’s continue to “clone” themselves in many labs. Have proven to be immortal, and hands-down the longest lived actively dividing cell line derived from a human being. The cancer patient Henrietta Lacks(hence the name HeLa) was born early 1900’s, her cancer cells have been “cloned” in large amounts all over the world, and researchers noticed that over several decades produced several genetic strains
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vegas sweetie. Better eating quality than its mother ant admire. Only drawback is its laggard growth and spindly thin stems growing on its own roots
below is vegas meaty on its first crop as a 3 yr old sihong seedling. I can tell fruits will be medium to large as an older specimen. Similar to its mother in pulp density and also makes great chewy dates. Flavor is that of a milder sihong, but can’t conclude anything just yet. Anticipating improvements in qualities on next year’s crops
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You are cranking them out!! I’ve had several SiHong seedlings and Xu Zhou seedlings with promising fruits this year. It was such a hard year that it’s difficult to know what they will really do.
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love it! Looking forward to that day when there will be more USA-born and bred juju cultivars than imported ones
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more photo-docs as we filter through our cheapo phones and tablets 
below is the first-ever crop of a 5 year old contorted seedling(growing from seed can be painstaking!). Relatively large fruits for a first crop, and eating quality is better than burntridge’s contorted, which of course, does not mean much, haha. Fruits are glossy like dong zao, and eagerly anticipating the quality improves with subsequent crops. Will plant it in a bigger pot to take it out of its deprived conditions
more of vegas meaty below
vegas lucky below seems to be more capable of multicropping as its mother, considering its young age and deprived conditions
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I’m trying to avoid that, by creating numbered selections If they are good enough after a few years, I’ll give them names. There have been several that weren’t even worthy of numbers, but the first few BV1 were very good.
I wasn’t sure initially, but I found some notes that make me think it is a seedling from So, even though the shape is different. The at least one of it’s siblings from the same year produced small sour fruit.
But, having a seedling which makes good fruit has encouraged me to try some more. Here are some Dong seeds that I just planted yesterday. Dong seeds are wider than most and there was a very high rate of seeds. Out of 13 that I cracked, only 1 didn’t have a seed. And 2 of them had 2 seeds in a single pit.
I started some seeds a couple months ago and realized that they weren’t really growing. So, I’ve setup some grow lights to help them size up. I’ll be moving the new ones there, once they’ve had a chance to germinate. Until then, I keep the pots in my office where it is warmer (75-80F vs 68F where the lights are).
Five 1 gal pots where seeds have germinated:
I’m growing seedlings from several varieties- Bok Jo, Mei Mi, Sandia, Dong, etc. And making sure to label the pots.
I have a HJ from JFE on its own roots and the fruit was close to identical (size, quality, etc) to other HJ. Same leaf curl too. Though that doesn’t mean that they always send out the right tree.
FYI- From Prof Yao’s genetic testing, Black Sea is the same as Russian #2.
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Bob,
No more fresh HJ in the freezer and now relaying on this Sihong honey dip jujube from H-mart for my jujube fix They are tasted like candy dates. @BobVance have you try this ?
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No, I’ve never been that fond of dried fruit, though Apricots and sour cherries (unsweetened) are both OK
Some of the jujube I stored back in October are still in OKish shape. Here’s some from a few days ago, though I washed off another bowl today. About 1/4-1/3 of the last one was bad, but there were only a few bad ones today. I guess I did a better job of keeping anything with a small crack out of today’s bag.
Most of the above are So, with a few Lang thrown in. Picked fresh, Lang are much lower quality, but at this point they are about the same, if not slightly better.
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yeah, had i not given vegas pasas budwood away i probably would rename it.
I think i named it “pasas” because didn’t get to try the fresh fruits on its first crop, and only got to eat it as dried raisins which were really, really good. Recently had a large sample size of fresh fruits and they were excellent
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kind of late to post, but below are updates from last summer’s crops
sihong:
sherwood(in many ways is similar to vegas booty):
vegas honey(hj seedling):
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fruits from left to right: R4t3, Sihong, and Texas Honey on one of our multi-grafted juju trees. If remember it right this has more than a dozen varieties on it
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strange occurrence on juju bark-grafts. Quite disappointed that none of the scions leafed out, but instead stimulated the rootstock’s cambium/meristem to produce de novo buds where the scions were in contact with the rootstock. If one looks closely, one will see at least two of the lifeless micro-scions nudged out of the bark by the vigorous new growth of the rootstock.
while disappointing , it gave some insights on jujube’s ability to leaf out. Taking into account the new growth occurred multiple times at the trunk’s tip, it makes me now think that juju root cuttings likely leaf out not from pre-existing dormant nodes along the length of root cuttings, but rather from undifferentiated cells which evolve into actual buds on as-needed basis(or when stimulated).
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I’ve noticed this as well on many of my jujube grafts. I usually bark graft the scions, and I’ll have shoots grow from the point of contact between the rootstock and scion where no bud had previously been. I usually try to remove them when I catch them early so they don’t compete with the scion. Sometimes they make it look like the graft took when it didn’t. Definitely don’t ever see that in any other plants I graft - one more thing that makes jujubes special!
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That is just so intriguing, and glad to hear it is not just me. Must be some kind of hormonal effect of the rejected scions.
Jujus sure are full of surprises, if not mysteries!
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Yep, me too. I actually have one that I broke the scion off 
and this grew and I am not sure if it was rootstock or scion. It fruited last year and it’s still not certain whether it’s the sugar cane or the rootstock with nice fruit. 
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that is a possibility, maybe the scion meristem is what may have been stimulated. The rootstock interstem i used was norris #1, and the scions were all round-fruited, so will find out by shape of fruits on these new growths.
It’s interesting that you mention Norris #1, because I notice that my Norris #1 tree has a higher tendency than my other jujube cultivars to produce shoots directly from the cambium layers of exposed during grafting. Now that I think about it, the shoots aren’t always coming from points at which the scion and rootstock connect, but sometimes also from another point of the cut to the rootstock (i.e., the “back” side of the cut rootstock branch, opposite from or adjacent to the side where the scion was bark-grafted but not in contact with the scion). The shoots that result from the point of contact between the scion and the rootstock always get more of my immediate attention because I’m looking for scion growth in that location. But the shoots come from any point of wounding on the rootstock. I wonder if I looked carefully where I’ve pruned the tree but not grafted branches if there would be similar shoots that originated from the exposed cambium instead of a bud. I haven’t noticed that, but it might not have anything to do with the presence of a scion.
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that is quite validating @ncdabbler
the only other cultivar have seen this happen was with lang. I grafted sihong on a thick lang upright. While the sihong graft leafed out vigorously, just an inch below the graft junction sprouted a bud of lang that leafed out almost as vigorously, which i removed to optimize the graft’s dominance. That lang bud sprouted not from a typical jujube node, but from smooth bark where juju nodes aren’t supposed to be(directly above a lateral, instead of diagonally below a lateral)
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