The Biosphere Blog

I always keep back a few trees every year. As soon as the last bare-rooted tree leaves for a customer, these trees too are packed exactly as if going in the mail. They do not see the light of day, and are completely untouched and undisturbed the whole… more »

Back in 1st September 2020 I began a new category: “Life of a Ta-Jan” with the intent of following a new Ta-Jan as it left dormancy, budded and grew during its first season after grafting. And then I had the idea of not only recording growth… more »

While waiting for the terminal buds of the 2020 Ta-Jan blogging tree to do — or not! — as predicted, I thought a post on transplant shock an interesting diversion this week. Back on the 22nd September 2020 I did a photoblog post showing the two years of… more »

Last week we covered the location of jujube tree nodes and the two types of buds present at each node. (That post has since been updated to include a crash-course description of the branch types as well.) The post ended with a summary of what each bud… more »

Nodes and Buds A ‘bud’, in botany, is a compact, undeveloped shoot which may develop into a twig/branch, leaf, or flower. The region in which buds are located is called a node, and the area between nodes is called an internode. Nodes are the… more »

UPDATE: This post didn’t make it clear at the time that these trees were handled contrary to norms in the interests of science. (Basically, I wanted photos of two years’ of root growth whilst demonstrating how tough these trees are with… more »

Below is the same photo of the young Ta-Jan mentioned back on 1st September 2020 in this post. The photo below was taken today, 15th September. This tree has not seen soil since July, as part of a little experiment to a) show how tough these trees are,… more »

This earlier post described the four branch types peculiar to jujube trees: primary (extension) branches, secondary (non-extension) branches, fruiting mother branches, and fruiting branchlets. Also mentioned were the two bud types, main and secondary,… more »

Around 7pm the other evening I was perusing my trees, and — as I often do, gently pulled down a fruiting branchlet above to look more closely with my loupe at the flowers and developing fruits along it. To my absolute horror it came away in my hand! I… more »

Anthesis is the period or action of a flower opening, and this post will document two Ta-Jan flowers doing exactly that. Firstly, a refresher on the parts of a jujube flower to make this easier to follow along:     Stamens and anthers are mentioned a… more »

Back here were lots of pretty pictures of jujube flowers, but not exactly much in the way of information as to what you were looking at. As with that week, this week is another time-poor one I’m afraid. But while this post will also be… more »

This week I thought I’d follow up on the last paragraph of this older post that had been getting some recent attention, as well as my comment under that post. Fig. 1 below is the very same Lang referred to. This photo was taken on 19th October… more »

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… more »

This post complements last week’s post on a Photo Journal of a Young Jujube Tree Coming Out of Dormancy, by getting up closer on the buds themselves as they come into life. The photographs below show a cluster of terminal (tip, end) buds on a… more »

All tree orders for this winter 2019 had been received by Tuesday 20th August, six weeks ago today. While these were being sent out, I deliberately kept a few over in the exact same conditions as those that were being shipped, ie packed in wood shavings… more »