Plant Profile of Zizyphus jujube (Rhamnaceae)

Abstract

A small sub deciduous tree with a dense spreading crown, commonly it is 0.6 m. Girth and 6 m high. Bark is blackish to grey or brown in colour, rough, regularly and deeply furrowed, the furrows about 1.2cm apart. Blaze is 9 -13mm, short fiber, and pink with or without paler streaks, the juice turning purplish black on the blade of a knife. Branches are usually armed with spines, mostly in pairs, one straight, the other curved. Young are more or less densely pubescent. Leaves 3-6.3 by 2.5-5cm, oblong or ovate, usually minutely serrulate or apex, distinctly toothed, obtuse, base oblique and 3 nerved, nerves depressed on the glabrous shining upper surface, densely clothed beneath with white or buff tomentum. Petioles are 2.5 -10 mm long. Flowers are 3.8-5mm.diam., greenish in colour, with dense axillary tomentose cymes or fascicles 1.2-1.9 cm long. Drupes are 1.2-2.5 cm. diam., globose in shape, first yellow then orange and finally reddish brown, containing a single stone surrounded by fleshy pulp. Zizyphus jujube is indigenous and naturalized throughout India, Burma and Ceylon, in the outer Himalaya up to 4,500ft. China, Afghanistan, Africa, Australia, Korea, Japan.