I might have screwed up! In planning our native food garden, I assumed our Western Sand Cherry (prunus besseyi) would pollinate our American Plum (prunus americana) since I read sand cherry can pollinate plums, but now realizing it might have been a rookie mistake. Further reading makes it seem like we need another American plum to get any fruit. Do you know of any alternatives? I know p. americana will pollenize hybrid plums but not the other way around. I found the attached Pollination chart that shows what the cherry will pollinate but doesn’t include American plum on the chart. Does anyone have something similar that does?
We really don’t have space for another tree but I can take out the elderberries if need be. My hubby really wanted these… I don’t love the taste but he likes them (tried at a demonstration garden).
I would recommend
grafting an Improved american plum to your seedling, south dakota or vic red would work. Alaska fruit trees probably has some vic red scion they could send. The alternative is to order wild american seedlings from nativ nursery or cold stream and plant them right next to the one you have.
If you can locate scions of Chickasaw or another native wild plum or Perhaps some hybrids of American plum, there is a chance for cross fertilization. I have several native thorned plums ( maybe relatives of P americanna) and Wild Goose that should also pollinate them that I can offer you this next winter when they are dormant should you not locate a source. This year I grafted a number of hybrids of natives hoping to improve pollination.
Dennis
Kent, Wa
You are welcome, I try to promote natives to help preserve the gene pool. I grew up with a native thicket or two in w Tenn. One thicket had several wild goose trees that were our favorite and they had companion Chickasaws of various colors so we were spoiled as kids growing up. With cross pollination we always had more than we could consume! So that’s why I am trying now to grow several native thickets. I am grafting natives and native hybrids from Canada to Mexico with a goal of creating a rich gene pool. So that’s why I like Roberts suggestion to you. This year I added Vic Red, Waneta, South Dakota and several others in hopes of expanding my native collection. I will be planting my seeds as these cross pollinate to create a mixed native thicket by a local creek each year.
Dennis
That’s great! I tried to focus our landscaping mostly on Colorado native edible plants. We have native currant, gooseberry (though it may not have survived the winter), smooth Sumac, American plum, elderberry, serviceberry, Western Sand Cherry, wild strawberry, and native onion. A few non-natives mixed in but aiming for 80% native plants. Running out of room now though, it’s a medium sized urban yard lol.
Canadian plum would likely pollinate American plum. i have c. plum grafted to my black ice for a pollinator. i got it from Everett on here. hit him up.
Hi Steve
Thanks, I actually did hear from two members who both sent me p Nigra scions! So I was very happy to hear from Everette as well as Eli from Upper peninsula Michigan. I expect there may be variants in p Nigra as you move across the northern border so I was very lucky to get scions from both. The only native plum I have yet to source is the Sand Hill plum which I think is a variant from Chickasaw. This year my two grafts of P Mexicana blossomed at different schedules on two different trees so I may have a variant or two of the Mexican plum. This year my plum grafting took me 4 weeks to complete, many of them natives! So many (about 280) my right elbow became inflamed so I am in now celebrating my wife’s birthday in Cancun to hopefully recover my body before beginning to graft other fruits.
Dennis
Solved the problem, we bought a second American plum (different nursery and year so hopefully genetically diverse) and are going to give it as a “gift” to our neighbors lol. They said they are happy to plant it since they don’t have any trees yet. Hazards of a new build is you start with nothing but then you get full control over plants that go in! Super interested in the grafting idea though, once our tree grows up a bit I’ll try it! Just about 4 ft tall now, planted last year.
I got 5 or 6 selections from them this year I’ll be trialing including vic red. Good looking scions. I’m mostly seeking cold hardiness, late bloom and black knot resistance. I’ll keep everyone updated.
I’m hoping to piggyback on this thread to get some clarification. In 2019, I planted a tree from one of those cheap online nurseries with terrible reviews. It was called a Red Prairie plum, and the description said it was a hybrid American plum. That tree never grew, never flowered, but also didn’t die. Every year, it got leaves, but it was about a foot tall. Same thing for the next 3 years. So in about 2022, I still wanted wild plums, so I bought a wild plum tree from someone on Etsy. No variety listed, just wild American plum.
Last year, Red Prairie plum decided to start growing.
This whole time, I was under the assumption that they were self fertile, I don’t know why.
It wasn’t until I read this thread that I realized that I was wrong. But I have also gathered that they should pollinate each other. Does this sound right?
My understanding is that an American plum will pollinate a hybrid but not vice versa. And that American plums are technically self-fertile since they are monoecious and a lot of nurseries sell them as self-pollinating (which is where I went off track, thinking they didn’t need a pollinator but the sand cherry would increase yield). Went down a rabbit hole though when someone in my native gardening group told me that American plum really needs 2-3 genetically unique trees to produce any real amount of fruit, and a lot of what I read from more reliable sources than nurseries said the same. I’ll defer to the experts here thought, I’m just starting out. Just getting into year 2 of a yard.
Hi Sam
The American plum consist of many different cultivars as you traverse the continent which is the primary reason it has survived in spite of the industrial age and modern ag practices. I read there are over 2000 p Americana cultivars. Their diversity provides the cross pollination required to increase diversity thus enabling the ability of the species to survive inspite of man’s activities that often impact them. Not only spreading by roots they spread by seed as animals and birds scatter seeds across the continent. I like you have read that hybrids cannot pollinate the native wild plum but I think the authors of such articles do not realize that every cultivar of P Americana is a hybrid!
I am adding hybrids and natives to my local trees and several off property public property thickets for that very reason because I believe that diversity among natives and native hybrids is the best way to preserve what we have inherited.
Where I grew up we had many local wild plum thickets. But by the time I went to college most were extinct due to land use mismanagement. So I feel that part of my life and some of my best memories are impossible to revisit unless I do something about it! So far my collection is maybe 15 cultivars but it’s a start
Dennis
Kent wa
a light just came on! my property is surrounded with older chokecherry bushes. why arent i grafting all these to hardy plums?! next years spring project!
Cool, will you let us know how that goes? Curious as to whether it needs an interstem to convert to plum. @marknmt has grafted plum directly to Nanking cherry also a bush, sent me some scions I am using to dwarf some sweet cherry trees for my neighbor.
Dennis
Kent, wa
the wild plum here is about the same size as a chokecherry bush (7-10ft.) so should be very compatible. literally have 100 within 50-70 yrds. of my house. some is on the neighbor’s land but he’s just letting it go back to the woods so he wont even notice. i got black ice and another plum i planted last spring, i can get quite a bit of scion wood from. this fall ill get in there and clear around them so there’s less competition. let you all know how it turns out. these are mostly mature fruiting chokecherries so shouldn’t have to wait long to get fruit.
And that plum I grafted onto tomentosa about 15 years ago is still a small tree. Another benefit is that the root doesn’t throw out sucker shoots like the plum does.
My tomentosa (Nanking cherry) is just blooming now. In a day or two it will be covered.
I believe @DougAtOakSummit has done this at his place and found Toka to be a good interstem. Is that correct Doug? Not sure how genetically diverse chokecherry is in North America but it might be worth a try Steve.
