Last year, which was an early year for all flowers, they where in full bloom May 14th at a Long Island beach.
1 Like
Probably not beach plums if it’s a lake. They pretty much only grow by the ocean in the wild. Not knowing anything else about the fruit in question, my top guesses would be blueberries followed by American plum.
1 Like
American plum sounds very likely. I think they were pretty decent size bushes /trees.
1 Like
September 2021 I was sampling some wild Beach Plums. I took two Beach Plum 8 inch cuttings Sept 22 and grafted them onto Santa Rosa plum the next day. I’m surprised that worked and they are now, May 2022, both growing.
4 Likes
The one with the very dense flowers sure does look interesting! Is it located anywhere near you (and could you even find it again)? Might be worth checking on it in August when fruit starts ripening to see if its fruit matches its blooms… if so it could be worth collecting some scionwood 
I was at the beach today. Flower buds have not opened on the beach plums so I hope to go back in another week so I can mark the better flowering ones.
1 Like
My early backyard BP is in almost full bloom as of this morning. Three others are in various states of pre-bloom. I’m an hour west of Philadelphia PA aprox same latitude. I would LOVE to get down to the DE Bay beaches (my list below) to scout this weekend, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen 
Places to Explore during BLOOM
- Big Stone Beach DE
- Bennett’s Pier Beach DE
- Webb’s Cut Off DE (maybe)
- Ted Harvey Conservation Area, DE (southern access road)
- Pickering Beach DE
- Port Mahon Boat Launch and Road, DE (DRIVE IT IF POSSIBLE!)
- Fraland Beach DE (Might be good if the road is good and if there’s parking)
- Woodland Beach, DE (GO HERE! GOOD PARKING!)
- Higbee Beach, NJ
- Sunset Beach, NJ
All I have is a graft on Santo Rosa. Also a Toka grafted. I’m curious if they can pollinate the beach plum that will be flowering for the first time.
Reading back through this old thread, and thought I’d mention that I’ve visited Burbank’s place in Sebastopol ~10 yrs ago. It became a housing development (and land trust), but a good number of his planting are still there. Much of it had to be reclaimed from all of the Himalayan blackberry that took over. I believe Burbank imported it for breeding, and it of course became the scourge of the PNW. Not sure if anyone on this forum lives remotely close, but it might be worth poking around there a bit to see if there might be any remnants of his Prunus maritima plantings. I found the staff there quite open to fruit explorers. We were encouraged to sample what was ripe, including some very unusual Sorbus hybrids that you eat bletted like medlars, but that taste a bit like chocolate pudding (kinda). Probably they have someone on staff too that might be able to field inquiries about still extant varieties.
1 Like
My beach plum bloomed today. This is Jersey maratima plum on Saint Julian roots… the same tree I transplanted from Maryland to Pennsylvania when I moved back here 4 years ago. This tree is multi-budded with Jesse’s Purple and Jesse’s Yellow from @JesseS. The bees were working it hard. I took today off from work to do some grafting. The sun came out in the afternoon.
9 Likes
Two wild Beach plums grafted (second year) to a Santa Rosa plum. All plum trees have finished flowering except a few almost done flowers on Toka so probably no cross pollination…
4 Likes
Hi Matt
A very nice tree!
It would be interesting to see your fruit pics later. I would be interested in trading scions this next spring. Each year I try to add some natives from various parts of the country to improve my pollination chances. Last I counted I have about 50 total but I would like to get more natives.
Dennis
Kent, wa
Nice bloom. I see a pretty wide range of blooming in my four mature BPs and am looking forward to seeing an even wider range once my 12 new varieties (fingers crossed - some of my scions were super thin and seemed dry…) are mature. Interestingly and I guess as should be expected, my two DE seedlings bloom at the same time (late, and leafless). My fruit tasting seedling (source unknown) blooms first, same time as my Wild Goose, and my ECOS BP blooms second. ECOS is not a big bloomer - it’s going to get some additional grafts over the next few weeks as a “backstop” in case any of my primary grafts don’t take…
1 Like
A loaded multi grafted beach plum, it’s grafted to 5 different selections that Dr Uva
made at Rutgers
11 Likes
Nice! Any chance you remember/labeled what the selections were named?
1 Like
They were just numbered selections from seedling trials at Rutgers. Dr UVA wanted to see how they would handle zone 4. They have mostly done well here, and I’m glad to have them
4 Likes
I haven’t seen any wild ones with that much fruit. How’s the taste? Any bitter after taste? Many of the wild ones I find have that problem.