Burbank is allegedly a pure J plum seedling.
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Most of the varieties common on the west coast are pure Japanese plum but in the rest of the country they are mostly hybrids. Santa Rosa, Elephant Heart, Laroda, etc etc etc are pure Japanese plums.
EDIT: no, see the following article…
This is interesting.
Genetic Relationships among Cultivated Diploid
Plums and Their Progenitors as Determined by
RAPD Markers
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Thank you @Stan . Not really what I wanted to hear but not too much of a surprise. Thats the next mislabeled tree…
Do you grow elephant heart? I am asking because my EH is exactly at the same stage as my “FS”. Does the bloom of EH overlap with your FS or FK?
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Thanks for posting that. I saw that article a long time ago, long enough ago that I forgot about it. It shows that even the California plums are largely hybrids. They are a bit more Japanese but not by a whole lot. The main source for this was Burbank who used several different species of plums in his breeding efforts.
Yes, Burbank used multiple species for his work on plum selection. For example:
Santa Rosa.—1906. A complex hybrid containing a mixture of Prunus triflora, P. Simonii, and P. americana, with the triflora characters predominating.
Beauty.—1911. “The product of a very complicated heredity including several species.”
Formosa (Wickson Challenge).—1907. A mixture of triflora species and several others.
Gaviota.—1900. Prunus triflora x P. americana.
Lieb.—1914. “Of complex heritage. Among its ancestors are the Burbank and the Satsuma. But there are numerous other strains represented in its heredity.”
P. triflora is the old name of P. salicina.
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EH blooms later than FK. The order is FS, FK, EH. The exact separation varies by the year, but the order is always the same.
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Satsuma started to bloom with Burbank right behind it. Santa Rosa is all but sleeping and Shiro is just starting to wake up. Geo Price and Flavor Queen appear to be my earliest blooming pluots
Mine are already past peak bloom… I hope I get a good fruit set. There seemed to be some bees doing their thing and we had some nice warm weather.