Jujubes

Our landlady has given us a bag of jujubes—like tiny, intense apples, with a single seed resembling an olive pit. At first they looked like crabapples, which I used to hate as a child despite my mother's lovely jewel-hued crabapple jelly and pancake syrup, because they fell into the grass by the hundreds (tens of thousands!) and had to be raked up, often rotting soft brown by then and resisting the rake.

I see that the jujube is thought to come from southern Asia, between Lebanon, northern India, the Korean peninsula, and southern and central China, and was likely introduced later to southeastern Europe. Of the buckthorn family, it's also called Red Date or Chinese Date.

From Wikipedia:

 Chinese and Korean traditional medicine believe the fruit alleviates stress. An Australian jujube drink is recommended "when you feel yourself becoming distressed." The fruit is also used to treat sore throats.

 The jujube's sweet smell is said to make teenagers fall in love, and as a result, in the Himalaya and Karakoram regions, men take a stem of sweet-smelling jujube flowers with them or put it on their hats to attract women.

 In the traditional Chinese wedding ceremony, jujube and walnut were often placed in the newlyweds' bedroom as a sign of fertility.

 In Bhutan, the leaves are used as a potpourri to help keep the houses of the inhabitants smelling fresh and clean. It is also said to keep bugs and other insects out of the house and free of infestation.

 In Japan, it's given its name to a style of tea caddy used in the Japanese tea ceremony.

 In Korea, the wood is used to make the body of the taepyeongso, a double-reed wind instrument.

 In Vietnam, the jujube fruit is eaten freshly picked from the tree as a snack. It is also dried and used in desserts, such as sâm bổ lượng, a cold beverage that includes the dried jujube, longan, fresh seaweed, barley, and lotus seeds.

According to infohub.com:

Many scholars also identify the jujube as the biblical atad, mentioned in the "Parable of the trees" in the book of Judges.

After valuable trees such as the olive, fig and vine have all declined to be king, the trees turn to the atad and ask if he will rule over them. He responds thus: "If you truly annoint me as your king, come and shelter un my shade and if not may fire come forth from the atad and consume the cedars of Lebanon!" (Judges 9:15)

The jujube tree is common in Samaria, where the story takes place. While its fruits are edible, they are not exceptionally tasty and it is very much the poor relative of the other native fruit trees mentioned in the parable. It can grow very large, easily providing shade for these small trees.

I'm reminded of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky,

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

And sure enough, others are too—

"Since sound is such a significant feature of this poem, it seems justified to take the sound of 'jubjub' as being close to the word 'jujube,' a candy named for a fruit tree, and to assume an association with the sticky sweetness of the fruit the bird eats."

How fun to be given so much in just a little bag.


image:
Ziziphus_zizyphus_foliage.jpg: Júlio Reis
Azufaifas_fcm.jpg: Photographer: Frank C. Müller
Red_Dates.jpg: Richard from Vancouver, Canada