This is a 40 year old plum tree near the coast of North Carolina zone 8b. the fruits are 2 inches long, oblong, golden with a pink amber blush when ripe. very juicy sweet pulp, tart skin, clingstone. We call it Algonquin. Some thorns, and suckers freely. It was a gift from my Native American great grandmother to my mother. My Great Grandmother had a grove of them. No disease has ever presented itself. It Grows quickly and fruits in 5 years from a sucker. Blooms early and I have lost the majority of the crop to frost but never in its entirety.
BTW, thank you for your good advise about European plums. I was getting ready to order 4 and stumbled across this forum. Thanks yall.
Absolutely gorgeous. This strain needs to be spread around so that it’s not lost. I’ve sold scion of my strains to Larry Stephenson who runs a nursery in Mississippi. He’s the guy distributing N.C. McKibben. He plans to propagate Toole’s Heirloom, Sonny’s Yellow, and Ridgeland for sale. The only way for these old strains to survive is for nurseries to take them on. Another nursery, the Garden Farmacy, LLC out of Bolton, MS has also bought scion of my varieties with the same intent.
Also, can I repost this photo on Plums and Other Stone Fruit in the Hot and Humid South? Thanks for the beautiful photo. Note that they look quite distinct from the other yellow Chickasaw type plumes, namely Guthrie, Sonny’s Yellow and Ridgeland. Thanks.
I have the same fear coolman. They simply can’t disappear.
The grove that this tree came from is long gone. Ill post a picture of it in its entirety. It looks like a giant shade tree, low and wide. the fruit does not keep, but it is large and melts in your mouth.
Oh my God! What a monster of a Chickasaw plum tree! You should get measurements and send it to Guinnes Book. This may be a world record for a Chickasaw (Prunus angustifolia) cultivar. I hadn’t seen this when I PMed you earlier.
It’s 2 1/2 feet across at the base. Folks that visit the farm have no idea it’s a plum unless theres fruit on it.
Lets assume its a Chickasaw…I mean, what else could it be growing in 8b? I have to prune the dead branches underneath that get completely shaded out, otherwise, it requires no care.
You should seriously get your local forestry department to document the size of that tree. If nothing else, I bet it’s a state record for a plum tree of any sort. And it might be a world record for P. angustifolia. In terms of trunk diameter, it’s twice the size of the N.C. McKibben mother tree.
A question I have is what other plum trees including wild ones are in the vicinity? Chickasaw cultivars are often dependent on the presence of wild type for pollination. But if a cultivar is pollinizing it, that would be interesting to know. It would be good to know if there are any well-known cultivars it blooms with for the sake of getting a handle of relative bloom time.
Fruit set and pollination partner update, Spring 2024
Fruit set: We had cool, rainy weather during most of the bloom, and one morning where the temperature dropped just below freezing for a short time. All the trees below are several years old.
Drag Queen-moderate fruit set, vigorous growth
Guthrie-moderate fruit set, vigorous growth on new graft and on an older, severely pruned tree
Native/Wild type-poor fruit set, moderate growth
Odom-good fruit set, requires some thinning, vigorous growth
Robusto-good fruit set, requires some thinning, good growth
Toole’s Heirloom-moderate fruit set, good growth
NC McKibben-Last tree to leaf out, grew well last year, too young to bloom.
Spring Satin plumcot-almost no fruit set. Unclear if from lack of a pollination partner or if it is very freeze susceptible. Two small trees, only slight growth. It’s on native chickasaw rootstock, so perhaps better growth on something else, which I intend to try.
Seedling plumcot-Great fruit set in one location, almost none in another. Robusto is almost certainly the pollinator, as it is right beside it in the location where it set well, and not present in the other location. Hoping that Robusto will bloom in Spring Satin’s location next year and pollinate it. Good growth.
Greetings everybody. This was one of three seasons when I tracked bloom times for my plums. However, I did not record the various bloom times of my different wild strains since no-one else really has access to them. Anyway, the attached table contains my bloom time records for 2018, 2020 and 2024. Needless to say that I have more mature trees now than I did in 2018 and 2020. What I call full bloom basically means full enough that if the flowers have access that day to pollinizers and pollinators, it has enough open flowers on it to produce a good crop. In 2018 and 2020 I only recorded the beginning of full bloom. In 2024 I recorded the beginning and ending of it. Note that some varieties like Auburn University Cherry and Sonny’s Yellow have a long shoulder bloom, meaning there are enough flowers to draw pollinizers and potentially can potentially pollinize other varieties.
Here is a precautionary note. Just because two plum varieties bloom together, it doesn’t necesarily mean that they are pollen compatible. For example, Mariana and Robusto always overlap bloom time with each other and multiple chickasaw cultivars. None of the three appear to be cross fertile with one another or any of the Chickasaw cultivars. I will post information about the pollination of Sonny’s Yellow, Flea Market and Ms Bessie in a separate post.
Second precautionary note. Some years (2020), I’m at the very bottom end of the number of chilling hours needed for some of my plum varieties the bloom properly. the order in which my varieties bloom seems to change those seasons. Relative bloom time can vary both climate to climate and season to season. In 2020, the plums bloomed way later than the pears. Most of the plum strains usually bloom earlier than my pears. That season, a lot of the plums didn’t get enough chilling hours in until a cold wet spell which yacked most of my pears passed through giving the plums enough chilling hours to bloom. That year I had a terrible pear crop and one of the best but late plum crops ever.
We are learning a lot about Sonny’s Yellow Chickasaw plum this year. This strain was introduced to the online plum growing community by Brad Harper from Waycross Georgia. The original mother tree that we know about was gifted to his grandmother by her Uncle Sonny from that same general area of Georgia. Brad remembers his grandmother’s tree being productive with another plum tree with tiny bitter, astringent greenish plums also being in the yard for pollination. We are guessing that it was a hog plum, P. umbelatta. Something about Sonny’s Yellow’s flavor reminds me a bit of P. umbelatta but not in a bad way. The fact that it doesn’t sucker until its old hints that it may have P. umbelatta genes in it even though the plums are not bitter or astringent at all and are quite big. (They are very good but tart when firm and sweet tart when soft.)
What is now pretty clear is that Sonny’s Yellow blooms for a long time even when it got plenty of chilling hours. Last year and this year the early blooms overlapped with Flea Market and a wild chickasaw plum in the yard. This year I also had a bucket of wild chickasaw and hog plum flowers in two five-gallon buckets near the tree. Then we got about three days of cold wet weather with no bee action followed by two sunny but chilly and windy days with some be action but, the bees seemed to be completely avoiding the Sonny’s Yellow tree. Then came a really hard rain with lots of wind that knocked all the petals off the open flowers. A day later the tree exploded into flower again with a late bloom that did not overlap with any wild type chickasaw plums, and there were very few hog plum flowers left in a bucket. However, the Ms Bessie was blooming with its first real bloom ever. Auburn University Cherry Plum and Sprite Cherry Plum were also blooming. The late bloom on Sonny’s yellow overlapped with the cherry plums last year also but did not set any late plums. This year it set worlds of late plums. Either the few remaining hog plum flowers in the yard or Ms. Bessie did the trick. As it stands there is a moderate crop of older plums in sections of the Sonny’s Yellow that bloomed early. There is a massive crop of much smaller plums on the parts of the tree that bloomed late. The main crop of flowers which opened during the week of cold wind and rain made nothing. Still the tree probably has as big of crop on it as it could ripen without sacrificing quality.
Last year the parts of the tree that overlapped at bloom time with Flea Market and wild type made a good crop. Parts of the tree that overlapped with wild type and the other Chickasaw cultivars and hybrids made some plums but not a lot. And the flowers which only overlapped with cherry plums last year made nothing.
Here are Brad’s pollination experiences. Brad has been having spars pollination success with only Asian type plums present. This year he got a much better but not huge fruit set with pluots and Ruby Sweet blooming for the first time. I mention Ruby Sweet specifically because it’s known to have a large pollen shed. A second, much younger, Sonny’s Yellow tree is at his mother’s house and had its first big bloom this year as did the other plum tree, Byron Gold. Byron Gold bloomed too early for the trees to get great overlap. Brad can’t find any plums on Sonny’s Yellow and only a few on Byron Gold. Brad kind of thinks that most of the overlap happened during that week of terrible bee weather. So as things stand, three likely pollinizers for Sonny’s Yellow are Flea Market, Hog plum, Ms Bessie, Wild Chickasaw and maybe Ruby Sweet, maybe pluots.
Note that Sonny’s Yellow wants to make a huge tree for a chickasaw strain. Brad’s tree is freaking huge, and it’s not very old. It’s well over 20’ high. My tree is getting huge even with lots of aggressive pruning.
The attached photos show my tree as a whole, a photo of the fruit from the early flowers, and a photo of the fruit from the late flowers.
Drag Queen Chickasaw X Cherry Plum hybrid: This is how my Drag Queen looked on April 14th, 2024.
Haldog, a member of this forum, has the seedling mother tree of this strain. Despite its size, my tree is still acting immature and bloomed very little this year. It still has two plums on it. Last year the birds ate the few it made while they were still tiny. Despite being purple, the plum in the photo is still very unripe. Hopefully the tree will ripen one or both of them so that I can get a sense of fruit quality. I don’t know if the plums will grow to be more Guthrie (seed parent) size or will stay more cherry plum size. Right now the fruit is about the size of a cherry plum. Haldog, who has the original seedling mother tree of this strain, says that he has a moderate crop on his this year. I can’t remember if he ever said how big the plums get. I think this is the first time his tree has set much fruit. Maybe will learn more about the fruiting charactoristics of this strain once Haldog’s fruit ripen.
As thing stand, I consider this tree more of an ornamental than a fruit tree. The flowers were light pink, almost white. I have two baby drag queens grafted onto Marianna 2426 rootstock which I plan to sell this fall. The red leaves are quite striking, especially when the sun hits them just right. My tree is a sucker from Haldog’s tree. I don’t know how agressively Haldog’s tree suckers, but mine hasn’t suckered at all yet.
