When I attended the birthday party of a batchmate in a Chinese restaurant in Friendship road Balibago, they served fruits in our table which included a familiar small fruit – mansanitas! I haven’t eaten this fruit for a long time. Our host said that the fruit is called jujube, which is actually the scientific name of mansanitas.
I am interested in mansanitas for two reasons. One is because my radio partner, Cecile Yumul, in spite of her expertise in gardening and planting, finds it difficult to grow this tree from seeds. There’s a mansanitas tree at the old site of DWGV radio station where she collects fruits for planting. However, even after several attempts, she could not produce seedlings. She is puzzled and wonders if there is a secret in planting this tree.
Adding to the mystery is the fact that there are two mansinatas trees near the Dau NLEX exit which sprouted out of nowhere. One grew on a small patch of soil on the NLEX overpass. Obviously, they were not intentionally planted there. Did birds or bats disperse the seeds in that place? How could they grow by accident and not survive when intentionally planted? Every time we see those mansanitas trees on our way to our weekly radio program in San Fernando Cecile shakes her head in wonder.
The second reason for my interest in the mansanitas is because it is closely related to the balacat tree, the tree where my hometown Mabalacat got its name. They both belong to the Zizyphus genus and Rhamnaceae family. The scientific name of mansanitas is Ziziphus jujuba Mill., while the balacat tree is Ziziphus talanai (Blanco) Merr. The balakat is endemic to the Philippines, while the mansanitas is native to China.
Being on the same genus and family, mansanitas and balacat share many characteristics. They have thorny seedlings and have similar leaves. They have the same fruit size and shape, but only the mansanitas is edible. The balacat fruit has a very hard shell, which we crack open to get the seeds for planting.
By the way, my research on the mansanitas shows that this tree has anticancer, antifungal, anti-ulcer and other medicinal properties. In China, the leaves are boiled and consumed as tea, used for the treatment of insomnia. The balacat tree also has medicinal properties and the leaves have been discovered to be excellent for making tea. In fact, the balacat tea is now commercially available and can be bought at the coffee shop in the old Mabalacat town hall which we now call ‘Tabnuan’.
While the fruit is eaten raw, mansanitas is made into delicacies in other countries. Smoked jujubes are consumed in Vietnam and are referred to as black jujubes. Both China and Korea produce a sweetened tea syrup containing jujube fruit in glass jars, and canned jujube tea or jujube tea in the form of teabags. Jujube fruit is made into juice and jujube vinegar. In China, the jujube fruit is also made into wine.
In Croatia, jujubes are used in marmalades, juices, and fruit brandy. In Northern and Northeastern India the fruit is eaten fresh with salt and chilli flakes and also preserved as candy, jam or pickle with oil and spices. A jujube honey is produced in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. In Australia, jujube is used to make beer.
What I want to do now is to grow this tree and discover the ‘mystery’ behind my partner Cecile’s failure to grow it.
