I purchased this tree about 5 years ago from TSC and it was labeled Byron gold plum. This is the first year I was able to get fruit to maturity. Does anyone have this variety and can confirm that’s what it is? I was expecting gold plums and got these. The fruit is very sweet with a slightly sour flavor from the skin.
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The flesh is yellow/gold ?
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It’s closer to orange. I’ll double check when i get home this afternoon.
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This is the flesh color.
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Hence the name of the fruit?
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Ok, thanks.
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That’s not Byron Gold. Your fruit should be yellow like Shiro. I have Bron Gold and it ripens around the last of June here.
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Is Byron Gold worth grafting? I’m looking to add more early plums.
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Depends what you’re looking for. For me it’s not that early, more of a mid season plum. As far as taste goes, it’s more of a good utility plum with excellent production, vigor and disease resistance. Also very early blooming. I like mine and plan on keeping it.
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I realize that I’m late to seeing this thread. That’s not Byron Gold. Byron Gold has yellow fruit. The tree in the photo has the Chickasaw hybrid look to its leaves, but the fruit looks like Santa Rosa. I haven’t seen AU Rosa, but I think it’s supposed to have Santa Rosa and Chickasaw in its pedigree.
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It looks like it does produce well.Fruit thinning for better quality.
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To let you know, I’m trialing Byron Gold again. When I first moved back to Statesboro, GA, (near Savannah HZ 9A) it got bacterial stem canker its second season. However, I’ve since figured out that the peach root stock was the disease entry point in my plums due to peach stem borers. I’m getting good results on what I expected to be iffy varieties by grafting them onto Mariana 2624 or one of my other Chickasaw cultivars. Sometime this week, I plan to graft Byron Gold onto Toole’s Heirloom, Ridgeland and another Chickasaw cultivar. I plan to graft several and keep two that are on Toole’s Heirloom and Ridgeland. The others I will sell in the fall. (I try to keep trees that are on their own roots and rootstocks segregated so that as they sucker, I confidently identify what the variety of suckers.)
One tidbit of information I found on Byron Gold which may be helpful in figuring out pollination, the University of Georgia gave it their highest rating for pollen shed which means that it should be a descent polinizer for other plum strains that bloom with it. They gave Robusto and Segundo really low ratings for pollen shed. They did say that in Byron Georgia it reaches peak bloom 4 days before Santa Rosa and three days before a lot of other Byron Series strains such as Robusto, Segundo, Ruby Queen, Ruby Sweet and Black Gold. Based on that information it should get good bloom overlap with Chickasaw wild-type and should bloom with Ridgeland, Sonny’s Yellow and overlap some with Odom. However, I’m not confident that any Chickasaw hybrid will be reliably cross fertile with a Chickasaw cultivar. If you don’t have wild-type Chickasaw in your grow, I recommend getting a tree.
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