Hi. I am very perplexed with a plum situation and really hope you folks can help me figure out what is going on.
The plum in question was bought from an on-line nursery as a Methley Plum. It is the very, very first fruit tree to bloom in my orchard, so that fact makes me think it is indeed a Methley. But other things cast doubt on that.
One of the strangest things about this plum- whatever kind it is- is that it seems to just refuse to ripen. Or maybe its just that I cannot tell when its ripe. You see, I keep expecting it to turn red/ burgundy color, but it hasn’t. But for all the world, it looks like it is trying to turn red. It’s been green all season, but the last 2-3 weeks, you can see a redish tone forming in the midst of the green. And if one of them get a bad spot, it will get even more of a reddish hue (you know how bad fruit tends to sort of ripen just before it rots). So I feel like the problem is that these things just won’t ripen enough to turn fully red. However, they have become fairly sweet, gotten much less hard/firm (I wouldnt call them"soft" but they are not hard anymore. ANd now they are starting to rot on the tree…exactly like I would expect them to do if they were fully ripe and no one picked them. Many are falling off, too, just like ripe fruit does. So in most regards, I ant to think that these things are ripe to over ripe. But the color makes no sense. They look like they SHOULD be red. But they are mostly a greenish color with a reddish background They are NOT the kind of green that I see in photos of plums that stay green when they are ripe. But maybe they are ripe, and this greenish red color is just the color of this plum (meaning it isn’t a methley) But I want to believe that it IS a methley which just won’t fully ripen. Then again, I would think Methley plums would be LONG GONE this late in the summer here in the south.
If all this is leaving you confused and sounds contradictory, its because I’m confused and see contradictions all over the place concerning this plum. This is the first year its produced, btw, so I have no past information.
Please look closely at these photos and try to help me figure out what the deal is with this tree. Is it Methley? If so, why is it so late and why won’t it turn red/ burgundy ? If it isn’t, what kind of plum might it be? Is it ripe?
Please help me figure out what in the world is going on here!!! Thanks everyone.
Its not Methley; there are plums that look like that when fully ripe and you must have one of them instead. Dapple Dandy pluot looks something like that for example. I found a webpage about them, they are called watermelon plums:
This page is in Israel, not sure what variety it could be but you can see your plum is similar to the one on the top right here.
Thank-you Scott. Just to be clear, are you basing that only on the fact that it looks and sounds like they might be ripe, and since a ripe methley isn’t greenish, it can’t be methley? Or are you basing it on other things? The reason I’m asking is that I fear I did a horrible job in describing the condition of the fruit and whether it is ripe or not. So, if you are basing your response on my (very poor) description of this fruit and its status, then your answer may be flawed. If you based it on the photos, I feel much better and can accept that its not a methley with confidence. In other words, I trust you and your judgement, but I don’t trust me and mine! Thanks so much for trying to help.
Somehow I missed your response when I replied to Scott’s. Anyway, this is getting sort of interesting now. I was a little disappointed to hear that it almost certainly isn’t a methley, but if it turns out that I have some kind of (fairly) rare fruit instead, then that’s pretty cool! I’ll lookup crocodile dandy and see if it seems to fit, so thanks for that. Also, as much as I desperately would LOVE for it to be a pluot, it doesn’t have the level of sweetness that I’ve tasted in the 3-5 pluots I’ve tried. But hey…FINGERS CROSSED!!!
I think it will be one of the Dapples. Maybe even Dapple Fire? Try to find out which other plums the nursery sells retail and commercially. Maybe compare ripening times with DWN chart
I have a Methley plum from Willis but it does not look like that but I would be willing to bet that is where yours came from.But mine is not necessarily a Methley either. Started ripening in the middle of June and is red on both the outside and inside.
I’m on Long Island. My Dapple Dandy still has a few weeks to go before fully ripe and it’s early his year because of the unusual weather. Here’s a photo
Let me clarify my opinion a bit… first it can’t be a Methley, its far too late and I’ve never seen a Methley looking like that. Second I’m not saying its one of those watermelon plums on that Israeli website, only that it looks a lot like them. It could in fact be the rootstock, maybe they were using random plum seeds for stock and its some random cross you have there. The fact that it is not very sweet makes me think it could be a seedling. Or maybe the nursery has some random odd plums growing such as one of those Isreali ones and they grafted it by mistake. If its a Willis plum I would up the odds of seedling, thats a cheap way to get a plum tree and they would have no problems with selling seedlings as grafted trees.
If Willis is selling seedlings as grafted trees why is it that several of my trees that are obviously not what I ordered but seems to always produce a quality fruit? For example, I have a apple from them that is supposed to be a Winesap but ripens in September that is sweet. It is however, a quality fruit. I have no idea what it is. But is not true that more often than not that a seedling will produce fruit that is terrible and not fit to eat?
I didn’t say they all are seedlings, only that some could be. All of the other Willis mis-IDs I have seen didn’t look like seedlings, they just looked like a wrong variety. But this particular plum sounds like a seedling if its not sweetening up.
Hi everyone. Lets start with a huge thank-you for all the interest and efforts to help. Let me also say that based on all your interest and your comments and photos, I’m now pretty excited about this thing…whatever it is! I also want to apologize for 2 things: 1) for asking a question and then not being available to help everyone help me…it was a busy day today. Two, and much bigger in terms of an apology, is that I’ve accidentally provided some bad information. You can’t help me if I can’t give you good information. So let me correct a couple things. The big one is where this came from. I thought it was Willis BUT IT WASN’T. This tree came from Walmart of all places! It was bought and planted in April 2012. Sadly, this was one of my first trees so it was before I started recording the nursery name where the Walmart tag said it came from. I do know that many Walmart trees here come from a place called “Park Hills Nursery” in Park Hills, OK. That was our local Walmart’s vendor in 2015 for sure, But I don’t know if that is the same source they were using in 2012.
The next thing I need to clarify is when I said it wasn’t all that sweet. That comment was made in the context of me comparing it to some other plumcots I’ve tasted, specifically Spring Satin and some others with the apricot-like skin instead of plum-like skin. Those are among the sweetest fruits I’ve ever had. But its wrong to say these aren’t all that sweet- they are actually quite sweet. Today I gave one to a co-worker and they went nuts over how delicious (and sweet) it was. I haven’t been as crazy about these because they aren’t quite as sweet as the aforementioned plumcots, and also because (and this may help you ID what it is) these things don’t ever get as soft as the plumcots like spring satin. THese stay pretty firm, closer to down-right crunchy, in fact. I like a softer, more melting flesh but that’s just me. In short, I strongly suspect that if many of you tasted these, you would go nuts and say its incredible. I just like the sweeter, softer, more apricot-like pluots.
I must say, btw, that these things look absolutely IDENTICAL to those watermelon plums in Scotts link. Identical. Much more so than the Dapple Dandy as shown on the Dave Wilson site. Its lighter outside and the inside is completely different. But there may be more dapples I haven’t seen photos of.
This is getting more interesting all the time! If anyone wants some scion wood from this guy next spring, let me know.
I’d be happy to repay all the help that people here have given me over the years by “paying it forward” by giving scionwood of this interesting and delicious fruit to those who want it. It seems somewhat distasteful to charge people for the postage it cost me to send it out, but if the list becomes really long I may have to ask for a little help with postage only. Of course no one charged me for all the great advice I’ve been given and while I haven’t received scionwood from anyone, I know many people don’t charge for helping each other out…and I won’t either if its a managable number or if you’ve helped me a lot in the past. But I suspect I may get a really large number of requests and if I do I hope you’ll forgive me if I ask for a little postage help. I’ll gladly donate the wood, the time, the packaging material, etc. And if its a managable number of requests I’ll pay the postage for everyone. But I hope its not seen as tacky, selfish, or ungrateful if I have to ask for a little help with postage if I get overwhelmed by requests. But I haven’t had many chances to repay the help I’ve been given, so I want to help repay it without charging and I’ll try. I’m open to comments on how people feel about charging postage when sending a large number of wood requests. I want to do what’s right and what is customary in this case. I’v only sent a few packages in the past (never charged) and never received any, so I really don’t know what’s appropriate in cases like this. Thanks.
I think it’s really your choice and in my opinion,being up front about it at first is the best thing to do.Then,there are no questions about what people expect.
I haven’t charged,but some have asked me to give them my address and they sent some money.
Trades are another way to go. Brady
