I think I’ve figured out the true identity of the plum that was sold as “Valor” by ACN for several years. I think @alan may know which years, but mine was planted in 2014.
Before I found out that it wasn’t really Valor, I sent out wood to a number of people, including @mamuang, so several people could be interested in this.
The good news is that while it isn’t Valor, it is still a very good plum. I just harvested my first ones today (yes, year #8…Euro plums take their time for me). Coincidentally, a graft on the next tree over from 2016 also had fruit for the first time. In fact, it had apparently identical fruit, which has the same size, shape, ripening time, and approximate brix (18-20 for the Valors and 20.5 for the MR).
One of these is a Mount Royal and the others are ACN’s Valor, See if you can pick the MR out of the lineup
Here’s a view from their bottoms. They both have the same dimple. Note that the fruit in the next two pics is darker, as the bloom has been washed off.
Of course, the first thing I wanted to verify was that I didn’t accidentally graft the Valor in place of the Mount Royal. So, I checked a few places online and their MR pics look pretty close to what I’ve got.
Raintree:
Johnson’s (who also had another pic with elongated plums, but both nurseries describe it as round):
Bob,
It never dawned on me that this fake Valor is Mount Royal.
This could be because my experience with another MT. I grafted that MT (scionwood from @galinas) and recalled Galina said her MR was unproductive.
Her graft set fruit but only a couple of fruit. They were small, (probably from new graft) . I let them hang until shriveled. They tasted jammy good. Because they were small fruit so I quickly removed the graft.
Had I kept it and it became more productive, I could have been able to compare them like you do.
I grafted your MT to two trees, one on top of the tree, the other was one a low branch. The fruit from both look the same and taste the similar but the one on the low branch (got filtered sun) were noticeably smaller. The graft bore fewer fruit, too. I remove the tree and that graft was gone with the tree.
The graft on the top of the tree has become more productive. It is loaded this year. The fruit are larger than the obscured graft. It is a small to medium size plum. I think mine will start to ripen in about a week. Unfortunately, look like I am going to get some rain (again) tomorrow and this coming weekend. These MT and mirabelles may crack!!
Thank you for your detective work and the graft. I love this plum. It taste like what a good (Euro) plum should taste like. It matches Fedco’s description.
Here are mine. Quite productive this year. The tree under the Kootanay cover so it did not get any spray. It suffered aphid infestation and other things. Leaves look very ratty. Fruit got some issues on their skin.
It don’t believe it’s Mt Royal, which at sites around here ripens a week or two later than fake Valor. MR also isn’t as good a plum but crops more consistently with heavier crops of fruit (might have something to do with not being quite as good). Unless, of course, the Mt Royals I’ve gotten in the past were all mislabeled. They were from Hilltop nurseries, which at the time had a very good rep with commercial growers. Maybe they still do.
Where did you acquire your Mt. Royal wood? From what you are saying, I’m guessing it was from a mislabeled tree. Wonder if it was acquired from ACN. I don’t think their mistakes are necessarily accidental, although they would never own up to that. It’s very difficult for nurseries to produce the right quantity of a wide range of varieties to meet demand. Home growers get the short stick, I suspect. They aren’t supposed to know any better.
Mt. Royal is one of the most cold hardy of E. plums and Hilltop had lots of customers in cold regions.
Ripening times this season are all over the place compared to “normal” years, incidentally. Some varieties are late and some are right on time.
There were two Mt Royal trees at the site I took you to in Westchester with two large orchards. I planted them there and managed them closely for over 20 years. It bore fruit as consistently and heavily as Castleton and is the only prune plum I can say that about. Fake V doesn’t fill that bill. It even was loaded last year.
I got it from Jesse in Feb 2016. He’s from Maine, so it makes sense that Mt Royal is pretty hardy. I noticed on one of the nursery descriptions that it is from Quebec in Canada.
The only plums I got from ACN were Vision, Valor, and Bluebyrd (since died, when it snapped at the graft union, though I have some other varieties grafted onto the rootstock).
My MR graft only has 2 fruit on it, so it isn’t a big sample size. But one was ripe now and the Fake Valor seems to be coming into ripening as well. So they seem pretty similar to me. But, as you said, ripening times can be off this year, so that doesn’t mean too much.
Maybe next spring I’ll graft MR onto the “Valor” to get a better comparison. Though being one tree away is pretty close.
Neither the MR, nor the “Valor” has all that heavy a crop for me this year. Maybe that is why they are both quite good. I’ll be interested to hear how good the fruit is from Tippy’s packed tree.
By MT did you mean Mt Royal or Valor? I don’t remember sending out any MR wood, as my graft is still relatively small, even after 5 years.
And if anyone is wondering, the fruit from the Mt Royal graft is the one my thumb is touching in the above lineup.
Edit: I updated the pic of the cut fruit. I somehow managed to mess up both the brix and the names in it.
Bob,
I grafted two fake Valor with scionwood you sent me. One I grafted high on a branch on Coe’s. The other I graft ed low on a branch on Castleton.
My Mt Royal scion I got from Galina. I put it on Mirabelle tree. It had fruited for one or maybe, two years. Only a couple of fruit. All I remember was that I let Mt Royal hang very late. They were small, sweet and jammy.
I won’t be surprised if my fake Valor crop this year is not as sweet. So much rain. Nothing taste very good so far. Last year, they were productive, too, and they were excellent.
I liked both “valor” and MR. Anything close to 20 brix is generally pretty good. But, mine self-thinned, so I’ve got nothing like the crop-load that you have.
I just finished my Castletons from the counter. I thought I had picked them all 4-5 days ago, but I found a few more on Monday. They were 19-21 brix.
To give you an idea how thinned they were, here is about 85% of the total produced by the tree, in one quart basket. Yes, I picked what was left on the tree (good sized, as it was planted on Myro in 2014). I figured that 20 brix is good enough that I didn’t want to tempt fate with a tropical storm/hurricane coming in a day.
Actually, 2 days ago, I finished the ones from earlier. I stumbled across the handful that I picked on Monday (the fruit flies on the damaged Lavina lead me to the box). Some had started to shrivel, but they were probably the sweetest fruit I’ve had this year. One of them registered a tad over 26 brix. They were wonderful. So much better than the iffy apples, peaches, and pears that I’m growing a ton of.
You must be behind me by at least a week or two. A few of mine were softening on the tree (without any damage). After that, I only waited a few days before taking it as the sign to pick the rest. They probably could have hung longer, but I’m happy with that decision. I just had a few which I picked 2 days ago and one was 23 and the other was 24 brix. And who knows what 5" of rain will do, even if the wind isn’t as bad as was forecast (the worst of Henri looks to be going a bit further East)
I think the big difference between Euro plums (at Least Castleton and ACN Valor) and most other fruits I’ve been picking is that they self-thinned. It’s a huge difference between 9 brix peaches, 11 brix apples, and 20+ brix Euro plums. Lavina, Ersinger, and Late Transparent Gage all did a pretty good job, while being massively over-cropped, but it makes me wonder how good they could be if thinned.
I would say I’ll wait 2 weeks after you picked yours. I am not confident in quality of any of my fruit. Yesterday two Pearl plums dropped. They were so bland. Fortunately, I had them last year and they were excellent. If this was Pearl’s first year fruiting, I may have a negative thought about it.
This constant rain has been tough on my fruit. Only apricots and cherries esp. the rainthat did not started until late June.
Based on Alan’s experience with Mt Royal, they don’t match. Based on what I saw in the yard, it is an exact match. But, mine is a fairly small sample size. I don’t think I got much (any?) of either last year. Aside from a few Castletons and one other variety (Muir Beauty, I think) which produced a lot, there were only a handful of Euro plums from all my trees.
I think the only way I’m going to fully resolve it, at least in my own head, is to get a few more crops and see if it consistently matches. But for that to happen, I need to actually get crops
There is also the problem that nurseries often mislabel trees, as do wood sharing hobbyists even more so. I bought 5 Mt. Royal plums many years ago from a single (Hilltop) nursery. They were a genuine nursery that supplied commercial growers and sold me Early Magic J. plum trees as well, which I ordered from them for several years in 5-tree bundles.
Fortunately, you can also research the timing of ripening, FN and B inventory suggests that Mt. Royal ripens in Late August. Fake Valor ripens a couple of weeks sooner.
To me, the only difference Fake Valor and Mt Royal is the ripening time.
Like @alan mentioned, Fake Valor ripens a few weeks earlier than Mt Royal.
@BobVance Has your Fake Valor become productive yet? I have many Euro plums grafted to the same tree. My Fake Valor is very productive annually. It is one of the most delicious Euro plums I have.
As a whole, my euro plums are not productive. Though I see several with decent sets this year. Middleburg produced a few in the past and has quite a bit now. Late Transparent Gage was productive one year and has quite a few this year. I’ll check the FV & Mt Royale, but I don’t think that area had too much.
I find fake valor to be superior in flavor and it is also a much shier bearer than Mt. Royal, which was one of the 3 most reliable croppers I have ever grown- right there with Castleton and Empress. I’ve been growing the fake for a few years now at different sites and it has yet to set an excessively heavy crop that requires thinning. Mt. Royal needed a ton of thinning, which made me underestimate it’s quality at one point. Thinned well, it is a good prune plum that can get up high sugar without falling off the tree.
I planted fako it at one site next to a Castleton, and the bore at the same time, but better fruit and Castleton is a good plum that I prefer to sell over the fake v because of it’s much better reliability. .
I got Fake Valor scionwood from Bob a couple years before I got Mt Royal from Galina. So, they were not mixed up.
Once Fake Valor started fruiting, it has been productive. Last year it set a lot of fruit. I thought it would be a low production this year. It is loaded again.
