The jujube tree bears the small brownish jujube fruits. The botanical name of the tree is ziziphus jujuba. The fruit may not be as famous as the miraculous pineapple or the sweet red apples, but it does have its historical background on its own. It can be traced back tot he Buckthorn or Rhamnaceae botanical family as they were cultivated in China for more than 40 centuries.
Moreover, the fruit is one of the most varied fruits ever existed. If you think that tomatoes have so many variations, then you must know that there are as many as 400 jujube varieties available. Each of these 400 types were successfully developed to have its own distinct characteristics that are so different from the others.
The fruit is just almost all the fruits in the world, it is good to be consumed when it is fresh. Even when it is fresh, the fruit has certain dryness and not only that it shares the similarities in look as the dates, but it also tastes as chewy as dates. And the tree can be said to share the similarities with dates too as the jujube trees are so hardy and can thrive in the extreme temperature. This extreme temperature means that it the wild, the tree can survive only with a little rainfall of averagely eight inches a year. Moreover, the trees prefer to stay in the sunny area then being in the coolness of the shades.
Because of the similarities between the jujube trees, fruits with the date trees and fruits, the jujube fruits are nicknamed the red dates, Korean dates, Indian dates or the Chinese dates. The jujube tree itself is relatively small compared to the average size of other trees and they are also deciduous. Jujube trees can grow until they are about 40 feet high, but averagely they are so much smaller than that. They have these shiny green leaves, the fruits that are of the size of grapes to strawberries and the modest looking blossoms.
The fruits contain only one single seed that is located in the center that makes them feel like drupes. They are called the red dates because as mentioned earlier, they are looking like dates but the color of the skin is brownish red and not totally brown like the dates. Not only that the fruits are red in the outside, but they are equally red in the inside. When they are ripe, the jujube fruits can be stored at the room temperature for as long as one week.
