Rather than a post last week, we had threee guest comments under this older post — direct links are here, here and here — and a big thank you to Adrian and Airlie for sharing their experiences! I stupidly didn’t actually post those links publicly at the time, and only subscribers were notified unfortunately. This post hopefully rectifies that mistake.

The past few days have been…quite full (!) of late with my advanced heirloom tomato plants, and now I find myself a day late in getting the regular post out!

I was intending to follow up on my comment in that older post, but this week because of time thought a quicker post of flower photos might still be of interest. Every fruiting branch, when covered in flowers, has flowers at all stages, from newly-formed bud to open-and-ready-for pollination. This is why jujube trees have an extended cropping period that lasts weeks to months.

This one is my absolute favourite, taken by my sister-in-law some years ago now. It shows an ant pollinating an open flower, with very new budding flowers nearby:

The photo above best gives you an idea of scale too. The new buds would be 2 or 3mm across while the pretty five-pointed stars that are the fully opened flowers vary from about 6 to 7 mm diameter, depending on the cultivar.

Other photos in no particular order: