Someone I know bought a farm that had these planted along the edge of their fields. We are pretty sure that these were trees he got from the State forestry Dept, and after looking at their list about the only thing I see that bear fruit are wild plums. But these sure don’t look like plums or taste like plums as I know them. ANd they could be from another source. I know the other farmer didn’t harvest them and the taste quite bitter. They look like cherries and have one seed with flesh around it and are the size of cherries. But I get no cherry taste at all from them. Any ideas?
Looks like a plum to me. What does the pit look like? Are they ripe?
edit: I should have read the post. You described the pit. Probably a seedling plum. Don’t taste like plums you are used to because cultivars are bred and selected to be big and taste good, not little and bitter.
Cherry plum.
Yeah it is a plum. I am not sure of the species. There seems to be more than one species in the southeast. Here there in IA there is mostly just Prunus americana.
The leaves on the last picture look different from P. americana me but foliage can be variable. The fruit vary from awful to not bad. Mostly they have astringent skin.
It they are cherry plums, that’s my guess, too, the skin is tart and they have to be quite ripe for the inner sweetness to make it all work. Often the trees are maroon leaved with reddish fruit, but the yellow fruit is not uncommon and they are actually mellower than the red ones.
Cherry plum seems to mean Prunus cerasifera, aka myrobalan plum. Those are a European/Asian species, and it seems to me unlikely that a state forestry department would sell them for habitat and wildlife given the focus on invasive species in conservation circles. (But I could be wrong…)
Prunus americana often has what could be described as “pseudo-thorns” where small spur branches die off and give the plant thorns. I don’t know if the other species of native plums do this or not.
Thanks for all the help. I learned today from someone who used to work on this farm that whatever this tree is, it was indeed provided by the state of TN. So, I looked up what trees are available. It turns out there are 4 or 5 types of plums that they give away as part of their program, so who knows which one this is.
BTW…there are several interesting trees on the list. I’m wondering if the chestnut hybrids would be worth growing for eating nuts??? Here is the list
There sure are…I have to assume that the chestnut hybrids and the shagbark hickories, etc., are seedlings so there is no guarantee of what they will produce, but one can always graft onto (or even top-work) one of these units as desired. Quite a few of the potential ‘fruit’ producers have zero availability.
Re: cherry plum being invasive, around here they are used commonly for landscaping duty by professionals and it is fairly rare to see one in the wilds on the edge of town, so they don’t seem to have that reputation. My concern with using one as an ornamental would be potential fruit mess underneath, though it seems that the birds take care of a lot of that.
Great points. ANd btw…this past spring all the “fruiting” trees on the list did show inventory, so hopefully the 0 in stock situation is temporary and they’ll have more this spring of all those. I am sure that they had paw paws this past spring, and I thought that was really neat.
I also appreciate your point about the potential mess under cherry plum if used for landscaping. For the last 2 years I’ve really had to fight off the urge not have my city maintenance crew plant some kind of pear or lower maintenance apple (liberty, enterprise, etc) or other fruit tree along right of way, medians, etc. Really the only reason I haven’t done it is that I’m sure lots of the fruit would go unpicked and end up on the ground. Even in places like highway medians where it wouldnt much matter, I feel like I’d be providing a great home for fruit pests to reproduce, which is a bad thing. SO for now…I’m not doing it. But part of me sure loves the idea of having fruit growing all over town in unused places.
I was going to say it looks kind of like a chickasaw plum which we have growing wild down here.
Leaves don’t really look like Chickasaw plum(P.angustifolia), to me, though the fruit does resemble it to some degree.
We used to run across individual clonal thickets of Chickasaw plums that were bitter… my dad always called them sloes… but I’m pretty sure that they were not P.spinosa, but rather, just a less-than-desirable plum
@lucky you’re correct, the leaves looks a little different then the Chickasaws I’m familiar with. These are much larger. But the way it’s growing and the fruit kind of are very similar…Having said that, I am by no means a plum expert.
Me neither. But I’ve abandoned all other plums as not worth the space or bother to attempt to grow.
Well Clark, I think you have pretty much put this thread to bed! There is absolutely no doubt at all that your photo is the tree that I was asking about. It sounds like different people have different names for it, but “wild plum” is good enough for me.