Description from Flora of China
Paliurus mairei H. Léveillé; Rhamnus jujuba Linnaeus; Ziziphus jujuba (Linnaeus) Lamarck (1789), not Miller (1768); Z. mairei (H. Léveillé) Browicz & Lauener (1967), not Dode (1909).
Trees or shrubs, evergreen, to 15 m tall. Young branches densely yellow-gray tomentose; branchlets pilose; old branches purple-red. Stipular spines 2, one oblique and hooklike recurved; petiole 5-13 mm, densely gray-yellow tomentose; leaf blade adaxially dark green, shiny, ovate or oblong-elliptic, rarely subrounded, 2.5-6 × 1.5-4.5 cm, papery to thickly papery, abaxially yellow or gray-white tomentose, adaxially glabrous, 3-veined from base, veins conspicuously reticulate abaxially, impressed or ± prominent adaxially, base subrounded, slightly oblique, margin serrulate, apex rounded, rarely acute. Flowers green-yellow, few to 10 in subsessile or shortly pedunculate, axillary dichotomous cymes. Pedicel 2-4 mm, gray-yellow tomentose. Sepals ovate-triangular, abaxially hairy, apex acute. Petals oblong-spatulate, clawed at base. Stamens subequaling petals. Disk thick, fleshy, 10-lobed, concave at middle. Ovary globose, glabrous; style 2-fid or branched to half. Drupe orange or red, turning black at maturity, oblong or globose, 1-1.2 cm, ca. l cm in diam., with persistent tube at base; fruiting pedicel 5-8 mm, pilose, 2-loculed, 1- or 2-seeded; mesocarp corky; endocarp thick, thickly leathery. Seeds red-brown, broad and compressed, 6-7 × 5-6 mm, shiny. Fl. Aug-Nov, fr. Sep-Dec. 2n = 24.
The hard, fine wood is used in making furniture; the bark is used medicinally. The leaves contain tannin used for producing tannin extract. This is an important host tree for the parasitic scale insect, Laccifer lacca (lac insect).
Humid forests, thickets along riverbanks, hills, slopes; below 1800 m. Native in Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, and Yunnan; cultivated in Fujian and Taiwan [Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam; Africa, Australia].