Does anyone have more information on this hardy plum from northern China or growing it? I bought some seeds from Oikos Tree crops that is coming in spring. But I can’t find any info on this particular plum besides the little info that Oikos provided on their site. There aren’t much pics either. I only saw two source, one is from Oikos and the other is from a blogger on fastgrowingtrees.us in Iowa. Both of the fruits are a bit different, but under the same name of “ussuri plum”. Oikos has a round yellow plum, while fastgrowingtrees shows a red fruit that is more oblong shape. But both fruits looks like decent size and will be tasty.
Any info is greatly appreciated.
Prunus ussuriensis and Prunus triflora are alternative names of Prunus salicina (a.k.a. Japanese plum). Luther Burbank used this species a lot for his breeding work. Most fruits known as “Asian plums” are either P. salicina or hybrids of P. salicina with other species like P. simonii, P. americana, P. cerasifera, etc.
ahh ok, so it’s just a Japanese/Asian type plum…Wonder if this is one of the wild form? On Oikos site, they say it comes true from seeds. Anyway, i’ll just grow out the seeds to see if I get yellow, red or whatever color my seedlings are. haha
That’s great, guess we’ll both eventually find out if its yellow or red. I also ordered 2 beach plum seedlings from them. Though I don’t know how well those would do, since I have sticky clay soil and not sandy soil here in Wisconsin.
You may be correct. I have ‘Shiro’ as well and they do enjoy it. But I’ve read that some of the smaller seedling type plums don’t suffer as much pressure. They don’t bother the Prunus americana here so I’m just hoping…
@Bede did your seeds come in yet? Mine just came in yesterday. Guess since i’m only a state away, mine was shipped rather quick. I thought maybe it might be in spring time with the 2 beach plum plant, but the seeds came in already. I ordered 25 and got 25+ pits…not sure what I would do with that many seedlings if most of them germinated? Anyway, i didn’t read the ad completely and the scientific name is actually Prunus salicina var. mandshurica or Manchurian plum…so I wasn’t wrong with triflora…
Seems like St Lawrence nursery carried this plant at one point too, but I don’t see it on their plum listing anymore. Maybe that was where Oikos originally got their start from?
Yes I got them in December I think. Along with Dunbars, Ecos Beach, and Wild Goose seed. I’ve been happy with the plants I got from them before and really like the selection. There’s a good podcast on this site with Ken as a guest… very interesting.
Hello sthao, that is my blog, I got mine from Oikos, so what they have and what I have are one and the same. I was expecting them to be yellow, but none of them were. They were good plums though. Problem was black knot killing about all them. Pc can be a problem, as it can be with all the stone fruits.
Oikos has mentioned the black knot problem in this quote, I think mine are before they massively start selecting against this.
Black knot is best described as the zombie plum disease as it covers the branches in a black, rotted-looking skin. It can destroy whole plants in the course of a few years. When we ran into issues with it about 15 years ago, I thought it might be the end of our plums. However, we soon realized black knot shows a weakness for plums that are not very good at ‘repairing’ themselves. So began our odyssey of removing over 4000 Ussuri plums while keeping less than 10 plants that show either complete immunity or at least living with black knot with minimal damage to the stems. Sloe plum had the same issue, however the odds were more favorable in the range of 1 plant per 100 being relatively or completely immune. At first, it seemed like an impossible job as we only had one source of each type of seed. It shows that even with a rather restrictive genetic base, not spending a lot of time, and keeping an eye out for the zombies we were able to find a more resilient and durable population of plants that can now can be grown by anyone. Black knot is now gone from our seed plantings and black knot is a distant memory.
Oh nice to have the owner chime in him self. Yours seems to be rather decently large size like some of the named Japanese varieties.
I have some of questions, do you offer scions for grafting?
does it graft onto the various plum root stocks available in the US to your knowledge?
When does it usually starts to first bloom from seeds or seedlings?
i’m asking these question, though my batch of seeds actually got frozen while in the top crisper drawer due to my own negligence. lol…so I may have lost all the seeds and will have to reorder new ones.
I got a Ussurian plum from St. Lawrence 30 years ago, and the tree is still going strong in Fairbanks, Alaska. It yields yellow freestone plums that look like the photo above, with very sweet pulp and slightly bitter skin. It suckers freely, so propagating isn’t an issue.
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