I’m growing some Ume trees that I started from seeds a few years ago. If I’m lucky, I might actually get some fruit next year (since one of them produced a tiny fruit this year, so I think they’re old enough now).
I have no idea what these fruit might even be like (edit, i mean these particular plants, I’ve eaten ume before and yes they’re not good fresh), and I’m curious if anyone here knows about different varieties of Ume, and if so, where might I be able to get scions for said varieties? I’ve seen names like Kanko-bai, Nanko, and Takada, that seem to be different varieties, but I can’t seem to find if there are any real differences between them.
Also, if anyone is interested in an air layered clone (especially if you live relatively close), I might be able to experiment with them to see if I can successfully root them.
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I would be interested to read what your impressions are if you taste one of the ume fruit fresh. I have tasted quite a few different cultivars and the ones I tried are not meant to be eaten fresh. I’m no expert, but believe that most of the edible ume is consumed as pickled or salted/dried.
Prunus mume is highly celebrated in Japan as the earliest flowering trees. Many cultivars of P. mume were bred for their floral characters, including aroma. Others were bred specifically for processing fruit character.
P. mume will cross readily with common apricot, and F1 hybrids are known collectively as ‘Bungo.’ The hybrids I’ve seen are very horsey and vigorous and lack the flowers or fruit of either parent. I’ve backcrossed Bungo hybrids two generations with high quality apricots,- the goal being to introduce the low chill character from P. mume into good eating apricots. But after two backcross generations, fruit quality was still horrible! The adjectives punky, sour and astringent come to mind in describing their collective fruit quality. Not a good one among them.
In terms of finding named cultivars,- check the botanical gardens in the research triangle park area.
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They are generally very sour, but their aroma is incredible. They’re almost like the quince of stone fruit. A few ripe ume in a batch of apricot jam really boost the flavor of the jam and add tartness. Green fruits are used for making liqueur/umeshu and flavored syrup (google maesil cheong for recipes).
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Ume I think are exclusively harvested green and used to make pickles and Umeshu wine.
Umezuke
Umeboshi
Umeshu
Umeshu is 50/50 fruit and rock sugar + rice wine or natural sprit. You can make it with any green plum, peach, apricot etc. So I always recommend people make it with their thin plums.
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I really like umeboshi and umeshu but my tree gets hit hard with black knot , so prob will remove it this year
