History, origin, and tradition uses of uncommon fruit.

St. Julien plum


Discovered the St.Julien plum this fall and am enamored with it.


I am looking for information (history, origin, culinary traditions, etc) but am finding mostly info on its use as a rootstock online.


Anyone have experience or know anything about this delectable little plum or where to find more info?

Prunus insititia includes St. Julien damson, bullace, and mirabelle

"My father planted an Itaian Prune Plum tree around 1960. The tree was cut down after almost 50 years of production. The St Julien rootstock lives on. I at first thought this tree was a green gage. Thanks to a posting by the late Lon Rombough on the Home Orchard Society website, I know am certain this is a St. Julien rootstock. The fruit is good on its own. Lon says it is good dried. An improved version is called White Bullace." http://edible.wikidot.com/edible-plant:177

Bout all I could find about it . . . How does it taste?

The first one I ate was a revelation. I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. It is just so different from any plum I have experienced before. All that new information took me a moment to process. Once I got my mouth around another I quickly decided that they are really something special. They are sweet and rich with a dense texture and complex flavors. The texture reminds me of a Concord grape in a way but that's really not it. Something new. And I love the emerald green flesh! Quite delightful...

Casimir did you grow those plums? What can you you tell us about how you grew them? Or where did you find them?
--where do you live approximately
--did you plant the original tree, is this a rootstock that was allowed to grow, how many years did the St Julien take to bear fruit?
--when did they bloom especially compared to your other trees, did you have another European plum as a pollinator?
--when was the harvest, at what point was the flavor best?
etc

I have a tree with a failed scion and I am probably going to try growing out the St Julien rootstock but as you say it's hard to find information, hoping you have some info from your own experience or whoever grew those

Whoa! These plums are green? And ready to eat? You might have to save seeds to share! Very interesting, please tell us more.

Hi Paul,

The discovery of the St. Julien tree was a happy synchronicity. While foraging for fruit and nuts (both to eat, and more importantly, to aquire novel genetic material for my garden) I stopped to admire an ornamental crab across the street from a plum tree I was picking. That's when I noticed a little tree that was dropping small green fruit from a couple of loaded branches.
It turns out that the owner of the house had cut down an Italian prune plum that they felt was to big for the yard. It had then regrown from the roots. She actually thought it was the same prune plum she had cut down. She didn't know what I was talking about and was surprised when I showed her the green fruits.

I believe it to be the first year fruiting but I don't know how long ago she cut the tree. When I was looking for ground fall to collect the seeds all I saw was Italian prune pits from years past!

I think it was mid September-ish when I discovered the tree. The fruits were mostly perfect at the time.

I live in N.Idaho by the way.

Hi Dana,

I saved every seed I could find! Discovering this plum opened my eyes a little and now I am very interested in the Gage's and Mirabelles as well as other less well known varieties such as Damsons, Sloes, and Myrobalans.

I love this forum! There are things here that you can't find anywhere else. I have never heard of these plums, these are so interesting! I am glad you found them, you will have to keep us posted on how they grow and produce!

For Casimir Holeski, Dana Jones and all others interested.

The seeds will need to be scarified then stratified for 4 weeks before planting in the spring at 1 1/2" deep. They will take up to 3 months to sprout and about 7 years to first fruiting.

These trees were the plum Romans ate. It is mildly acidic but sweetens when fully ripe.

It is member of the Damask Plums and is used to make Slivovitz.

The Victoria Plum is also a member of this group. It was discovered in Sussex around 1830-1838 and first introduced for sale by Denyer, a nurseryman at Brixton in London in 1840.

These plums first became popular for root stock in the 1970's when dwarfed fruit trees became more and more popular.

Sicons of these trees will generally root easily in a green house environment.

Hope this information helps.

St.Julien is commonly available as rootstock for the prunus family. In fact I grafted a bunch of them to various other plums and peaches just this spring. Looks like it would be worth leaving one of them to grow as is.

They look like what we in the UK call Greengages to me.
Cant buy them fully ripe in the fruit market as they dont keep well. But when fully ripe on the tree they are so sweet. They are probably my favorite fruit period, certainly the king of prunus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greengage

Hello. I am looking for as much information as possible on greengage, its morphology, appearance ...

Hi, I've just discovered this forum while searching for the root stock plum that our Mirabelle plums must have been grafted upon.  So it appears they are St. Julien, I had thought they were a gage and really haven't used them as our Mirabelles produce so well.  This year with all that's happening in the world, and the St Juliens produced an exceptionally heavy crop, I decided not to let the foxes, skunks, deer and birds have them all!

I am finding them a bit tart and am going to try various methods of harvest, from juice and sauce to freezing them for plum cakes.  I saw drying was mentioned as well.  Thank you for all the information so far : ))

I haven't looked to see if I can post pictures of our trees and fruit.

As a non-native speaker of English I was not familiar with greengages or St. Juliens plum, so I looked them up.

Apparently greengages ar what we called Reineclaudes. I love them, you normally can't buy them in the supermarket. We had one little tree that produced maybe 6 fruits in all the years. It was too wet and cold for the tree, alas.

I have learned that St. Juliens plum are often used as a base for crafted trees in Germany as well.

There are three varieties:
St. Julien „A“
quite productive, will not produce "creepers" (stolons?)

St. Julien „INRA2“ / „655/2“
high productivity, long life-span, will produce creepers

St. Julien „Pixy“
reduced growth, early and high productivity with smaller fruits, prone to frost damage

I don't think the St. Juliens plum is common here. We have local varietes in yellow, red and dark blue.

I read some interesting text the other day regarding Damson plums and I came upon a book by the name of "Palaeohistoria 39,40 (1997-1998): Institute of Archaeology, Groningen, the Netherlands" on page 548 on Google Books mentioning the St Julien plum, which made me think of this thread:

At present the French ' St. Julien ' is the only known insititia variety that can be suitably dried

St Julien belongs to the Damson/Prunus insititia type of plums, so they are bound to be quite acidic and will often be quite sour tasting unless completely fully ripe where even the most sour varieties can be quite tasty, but if they are not completely ripe a lot of people find them way too sour to eat. While the St Julien variety seem to be lowly esteemed today and only used as rootstock it apparently was widely cultivated back in the 19th century in southern France, perhaps the fruits need to be grown in a Mediterranean climate in order to reach their full potential or it just fell out in favour for more sweet and less acidic plums. Damson plums as a whole seem to have fallen out of favour with people and many nurseries don't even sell any of any kind nowadays, so it could just be a part of that trend I guess. Still if it used to be widely grown in the 19th century it definitely can't have been that useless for eating or for use in cooking, desserts, alcohol making etc and it seems to have even been a good drying plum - a very unusual property for a Damson plum otherwise. There are lots of more interesting mentions in older writings on Google Books on the St Julien plum.

Damson plums are very easy to propagate with root suckers which they are very prolific at making and you can also root cuttings with not too much difficulty, no point in grafting Damson plums that are already very hardy and themselves used as hardy rootstocks. It doesn't take much space to keep one or a few trees of Damson plums if anyone wants to try growing them. The trees don't grow big. Having read more about St Julien plums and their past history of being widely grown back in the 19th century days in France and that they can be dried which is very rare among Damson plums it sure does sound interesting to try growing these as proper trees and not just as rootstock for other plums.

Edit: Also Damson plums require nearly no care and will consistently crop well once they are mature enough. The trees also keep renewing themselves when the old ones die, they also work well grown as a hedge, natural fence etc. They do shoot A LOT of suckers and often quite far away from the tree though.

Reineclaudes are one of my favorites, love them! There's such a variety of plums out there. I remember when I was in Serbia, we found lots and lots of ripe very sweet plums, no one cared to picked them up, apparently, people didn't eat that much fruits there, and normally those plums were meant to be used for liquor... Same in south of France, they have many nice varieties of sweet plums, that were mostly used to make the very strong "eau de vie". I personally find them really tasty as they are.

Lana Weldon wrote:Reineclaudes are one of my favorites, love them! There's such a variety of plums out there. I remember when I was in Serbia, we found lots and lots of ripe very sweet plums, no one cared to picked them up, apparently, people didn't eat that much fruits there, and normally those plums were meant to be used for liquor... Same in south of France, they have many nice varieties of sweet plums, that were mostly used to make the very strong "eau de vie". I personally find them really tasty as they are.

The fruits in the OP are Damson plums ie Prunus Domestica                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                         var. insititia/Prunus insititia and not of the Gage/Greengage(var. Italica) family though. I do wonder if they might have some Gage ancestry though. I also have Damson plums at home that are very sweet and freestone and very tasty as dessert fruits which aren't that common properties for Damson plums, although even the very sour varieties are quite good tasting when 100% ripe or over-ripe.

Were the plums in Serbia deep blue and freestone? Were the trees growing as thickets with lots of suckers around them? It's weird because I've read both that plum brandy in Serbia is made from Damson plums while other source state that it is prune plums specifically of the commonly named "Hauszwetsche" variety that are used(the cultivar has a different name in Serbian).. a bit confusing. Anyway plums as a whole are an amazing fruit, I would even rank a tasty plum to be near #1 among ANY of the fruits that exist on this planet - there's no fruit I can name that I would say is MORE tasty than a really tasty plum like say a greengage plum.

Those green plums look delicious. Where can I purchase them? Do you have a link?

I have 2 damson plum trees (I guess) here in Germany. I have successfully pitted and dried them when slightly underripe. I have one Victoria type plum trees but I never get fruit - all ripe fruit of any kind I lose to the hundreds of starlings who consider all my fruit as their personal larder . Wild we have round yellow and red ones, usually sour but sometimes sweet, I forget the name, plus in the shops one can buy "Zwetschgen", the smaller oval blue ones.

I'm glad I found this thread and a big thanks to the contributors. Our neighbor has one of these plum trees and we didn't know what it is. The tree isn't always a reliable producer in our cool valley but it's a tough plant.

Our neighbors don't like the fruit and usually leave it for wildlife. I found that the plums got much sweeter after picking and letting sit in a cool room for a week or so. I loved them and planted a bunch of the pits at the edge of our forest. We'll see if anything comes up.

Hello....always amazed that no matter how old the thread is, the information to me is always fascinating.  Love the response on the plums dating back to the Romans, even brought a visual of them sitting around eating them.  It also brought back a memory of a YouTube video about a Korean recipe for green plums. I saved it because I was going to go to the asian store and see if I could find it someday.  Think they are available sometime in May/June.  It is described as being very sour.   Here is the link.  
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrg-0IXeqw8&list=PL0DJyrWcqX7RX1CR5btsCWGCZfg-g44Fo&index=52&t=65s]


0:35 / 13:16

Green plum syrup, liquor, & pickles


0:35 / 13:16

Green plum syrup, liquor, & pickles[/url]

Don't know why it showed up twice, but the links worked when I previewed it. Didn't start from the beginning, so might need to move the cursor to the start of the video.
Also when I purchased my property 9 years ago, I found several small bushes planted under a tree, very very crowded like.  one year, to my surprise I found small ( a little bigger than those collossal green Spanish olives) yellow/red plums on it , they tasted sour but a bit sweet too, so I transplanted them all (6 of them) so they could grow bigger.  Last year I had a good harvest and had so much that I decided to try and make wine with it.  It was very, very, yummy to me, slightly fruity, with a touch of sweetness,  about 5% in strength. Everyone that I gave it to responded they like it and asked for more.  I had made about 8 gallons of it, still have a few bottles left.  I had never made wine before, and much to my surprise it got a bit stronger  now about 12% (the alcohol content) when I last drank it a few weeks back.  Made me go straight to bed and had a very good nights sleep...lol.  My children laughed and gently told me that it was on the very high side.....

I see the urls not working...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrg-0IXeqw8&list=PL0DJyrWcqX7RX1CR5btsCWGCZfg-g44Fo&index=52&t=65s

green plums recipes

I've been having trouble growing plums in my sandy zone 4b, so I checked on this one:
https://fps.ucdavis.edu//treedetails.cfm?v=1437#:~:text=Plum%20trees%20grown%20on%20St,plums%20in%20more%20northerly%20latitudes.
Apparently, it is used extensively as a rootstock, especially in northern climes.
The raintree Nursery says it is good for zones 3-9 and also talks of it as a rootstock.
I'll have to see if I can try one.

An old UK wildflower book I have lists the following under the subsection Prunus of the genus Prunus:
P. spinosa, the sloe or blackthorn. Sour fruit, thorny bush, suckers readily. Globose stone, adherent flesh. Twigs shortly pubescent, lasts about a year.
P. cerasifera, cherry plum, sometimes called Mirabelle. Tree, rare suckers (I've had one in about 20 years), earliest of these three to flower. Glabrous twigs. Stone a little flattened, more or less orbicular (mine are elongated), quite smooth.
P. domestica, plum. Reckoned to be a hybrid of the above two, followed by chomosome doubling (P spinosa has 32 chomosomes, cherry plum and many others of the genus 16 - hence ease of crossing Asian plum with apricot, etc). 3 subspecies:
P. domestica ssp institia, bullace: pubescent like sloe, often somewhat thorny, orbicular stone. Damson is derived from it.
ssp italica, geengage. Larger in all parts than institia, not thorny
ssp domestica, plum. Usually a small tree, not thorny. Young twigs sparingly hairy or glabrous. Much flattened stone, sharply angled.
So you see where some of the characteristics of plum trees come from, especially when they sucker - and why P. cerasifera is often the preferred option as a rootstock.
Now, where does St Julien come in?

Anthony Powell wrote:An old UK wildflower book I have lists the following under the subsection Prunus of the genus Prunus:
P. spinosa, the sloe or blackthorn. Sour fruit, thorny bush, suckers readily. Globose stone, adherent flesh. Twigs shortly pubescent, lasts about a year.
P. cerasifera, cherry plum, sometimes called Mirabelle. Tree, rare suckers (I've had one in about 20 years), earliest of these three to flower. Glabrous twigs. Stone a little flattened, more or less orbicular (mine are elongated), quite smooth.
P. domestica, plum. Reckoned to be a hybrid of the above two, followed by chomosome doubling (P spinosa has 32 chomosomes, cherry plum and many others of the genus 16 - hence ease of crossing Asian plum with apricot, etc). 3 subspecies:
P. domestica ssp institia, bullace: pubescent like sloe, often somewhat thorny, orbicular stone. Damson is derived from it.
ssp italica, geengage. Larger in all parts than institia, not thorny
ssp domestica, plum. Usually a small tree, not thorny. Young twigs sparingly hairy or glabrous. Much flattened stone, sharply angled.
So you see where some of the characteristics of plum trees come from, especially when they sucker - and why P. cerasifera is often the preferred option as a rootstock.
Now, where does St Julien come in?

Thank you so much for this research. I knew that the Prunus family has a lot of variants and this explains why they can cross between cultivars that we would not think of as "crossable" but this really help.
To answer your question:  It is a Prunus Domestica institia  if we can believe this website:
https://www.forestart.co.uk/product/st-julien-plum-seed/
Insistitia comes from the Latin for "insistence". This might explain why it makes a good rootstock?