That looks like a Prunus mume to me. Are the flowers fragrant?
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Slightly, but not near as fragrant as my prunus americana and salicina hybrids. Bloom time, twig color, and leaf description match mume. If the fruit comes out fuzzy it would be a clear indicator.
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Shiro Kaga is a variety of Mume. I’ll bet that is what I have. Maybe I need to learn how to make umeboshi 
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I think so too. Ume definitely can have green twigs like that.
Unless you like umeboshi, I would make maesil cheong (Korean plum syrup) or Japanese plum wine instead. They’re a bit more versatile. Apricot jam with one part ume to three parts apricots is also fantastic. Or jam with any stone fruit. Ripe ume have an incredible aroma.
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This is my Shiro from Adams County Nursery. Wood looks less red than a peach/aprium, but not particularly green to me, and definitely not distinctly green.
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My shiro has a reddish tint to the wood/bark… i found pics of other shiro plum trees online that looked similar.
Mine did not have any green shoots like the one pictured above did.
My tree is young… this is second leaf for it.
No fruit yet… with my luck with jplums… it could be years before I have fruit that makes it past our late frosts.
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Someone should try to breed E. plums for the south because they are genetically predisposed to much later flowering. Bluebyrd is virtually immune to black-knot, so that has to be a start. E. plums have higher brix and are more useful in the kitchen than J.s, although Ruby Queen is an exception- it makes the most beautiful sauce I’ve ever seen.
I’m lucky to live in a region, while not as amenable as much of CA, still capable of producing a wide range of fruit species. A lot of my customers are more blessed than me in having fewer hard frost problems.
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I started 2 Eu Plums… 2018…
Mt Royal, Rosy Gauge…
Rosy had multiple cases of Blk Knot over the years which i took care of by removing wood.
Last spring they both (for the first time) had just a few blossoms.
Rosy died of some kind of wilt when leafing out a bit later.
I have the Mt Royal left… it is supposed to be self fertile… so i still have some hope for getting Eu Plums from it. It is covered in fruit spurs… this year could be the year. It is still quite dormant… and yes… should bloom a few weeks later than the jplums.
One thing I dont like about Eu Plums is waiting 6 ot 7 years to get first fruit.
I will not plant another.
Here in the south (southern TN)…
I had two EU Plums planted in a 2 in 1 setup… about 2.5 ft apart.
Rosy Guage got black knot in 2 of the almost 6 years that it lived.
Mt Royal… right next to it… has not had any black knot so far.
I just pruned it last week and no sign of black knot… just starting on year 7 for it.
I dont know if Mt Royal is known to be resistent to black knot… but it has done well for me so far.
Now if mine would just start producing plums.
The vid below encouraged me to try that variety.
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I Will be trialing several of the disease resistant and/or precocious euro plums over the next few years grafted to mature peach/plum trees and on young marianna 2624 rootstocks.
President, bluebyrd, kenmore, empress, to name few. Hopes are high for now.
this doesn’t look like Shiro to me. I agree it looks like mume, Japanese apricot. Have you tasted the fruits? Are they sweet or tart/sour?
They have consistently frozen out, so i haven’t tasted them. We will see this year if they are fuzzy which would conclusively point to mume.
All other signs point to mume, so I reached out to fruitwood nursery and they are sending a replacement.
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I have scion of Vic Red on the way.
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Today Feb 28…
AU Rosa has a few blossoms open.
So looks like it will bloom at the very end of Feb and into early March. That is a little better than my previous 2 J plums… which both started and finished blooming in Feb.
Notice the branch low left with no blooms open yet.
That is a graft of AU Producer that I added last spring. Looks like it may be a little later than AU Rosa.
It does have a few blossoms getting ready.
And below…
Is what my Shiro looks like Feb 28.
It is not rushing out… which is a good thing here.
TNHunter
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Shiro is about the most reliable J. plum for the northeast and the only one I’ve seen in farmer’s markets, although I don’t go to those much these days. Methely also bears fairly consistently but sucks black knot out of thin air. My favorite reliable one now is Reema, it is much better quality than those other two as performing here- at least once the trees are established and have full access to moisture in the soil. Reema gets more brix.
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Here in Western North Carolina at 2200 ft. Both the AU Rosa and Methley trees are getting ready to bloom (2/28). The previous two years they began blooming in mid-Feb so a little encouraging. However, our last frost is the first week of May and we normally have overnight temps as low as the mid 20s until mid to late April.
They are both planted on the SW side of a hill so that is not helping…
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Mid-Missouri zone 6a (now 6b) Feb 28, 2024. As of today, the only tree in the orchard having buds that show any color is the SantaRosa plum.
The other plum trees that I have; Methley, Stanley Prune, Prairie Red and Damson.
Low temperature this morning was 18 degrees F.
Very true!
I spent what seemed like 4 hours pruning black knot out of my Methley the last week. One large branch I tried the hot gun on without pruning it out. In the past when I done that it left a serious scar on the branch so this time, I just lightly scorched it. Wondering how simply cutting the black knot out or scraping it off would work? I’ve have never had a branch to die because of black knot because I have fought it, but I feel like I’m losing the fight.
Does not make much difference because the last 4-5 years it has lost the fruit to frost/freezes. It bloomed yesterday and the temperature is supposed to get down to near freezing tonight. I’ll try to protect it with a heat lamp. There is no saving it when the temp gets down to about 26 F or so.
Near freezing is not a major problem. Mid 20s will do your thinning for you. Low 20s is devastation.
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Freezes don’t matter until they get down to about 24F. We used to get freezes right up into mid-May and light freezes are of no consequence. Once, in the '90’s, we got down to 22F around Memorial day… there were consequences. There was no apple crop that year- forget about peaches and plums.
A second generation commercial apple grower told me a freeze like that happens about once a generation, so by his calculations we are about due. However, I doubt such intervals were predictable even back then but now all bets are off.
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