What plums are these?

Hi to all,

I got these at a good price, they were marked "Upstate New York Organic", they look a little like the variety, if its a variety "Lemon Plums", they're pretty small, truthfully the taste ok was not impressive
but I got them as an experimental rootstock, they were pretty cheap. Can you identify them?  About 5 percent of them had a blushed reddish color. They're sweet but not over the top.

They are definitely going in the ground however, fifty more babies to feed the planet.

Thanks, M

Hi Micheal,
They look a lot like Mirabelles Prunus domestica subsp. syriaca They should be very sweet when they are ripe but many of the fruits in the photo look as though they've been gathered too soon and are still a bit green.

Those plums look just like the first plum tree we ever owned.  It came with our first house.

Those plums made the best jelly ever!

Sadly the tree only produced every other year and we sold the house.

I have no idea what that variety is.  I am in Texas and I would assume my tree was probably planted when the house was new, maybe in the 1930s.

I really doubt that mine were lemon plums as they look more like pictures of mirabelle.

Be sure to save the seeds and plant some plum seeds to see what you might get.

I thank you for that, I did have a couple of the ripe ones, already, they were mealy in texture and passably sweet.  But I'll let the others ripen up. Mirabelles, thanks!

Thanks for that, Anne.  I got them because they were (1) organic and (2) stone fruits, and I have hopes they would sprout.  Follow up question, now that the weather is pretty hot, supermarkets are marking down their (non organic) cherries.  I have always been told only to plant the organics because of high germination rate, but what about non-organic cherries?  They are going for about 100x per $1.50.  Any idea about the germination rate of non-organic stone fruits?

Thanks, Mike

I really haven't tried germinating fruit seeds at least not recently.

I could be wrong though I feel organics are recommended because most people feel they can trust that they were grown without chemicals.

With potatoes, organics will not be sprayed with chemicals to inhibit sprouting.

I bought some of these for the first time this year.  I thought they might be Ume plums but they're not; luckily they can still be used to make umeboshi (salted fermented plums) and maesil-cheong (Korean plum syrup).  I made some into jam, too, which I use in my iced tea (I tried to make them a 1:1 sugar to fruit syrup, but they're loaded with pectin and set into a thick jam without any help).  Used in a drink is where their flavor really shines, in my opinion--they're tart enough to be refreshing, but not overpowering.  

I kept the pits from the jam (the umeboshi and maesil-cheong plums are used whole), so we'll see how they germinate next year.  I suspect mine were conventionally grown; I got them from a local farmstand but they were bought-in, so no idea where they came from.  I hope they do well, I wouldn't mind having my own supply of them since they were pretty pricey ($3/ pint).

Great info. Thanks!

So I have a plum trees that produces plums that look like the picture but they are very bland. Maybe I need to let them ripen more as others have said but they don't have the nice tartness from the skin that I expect even in an unripe plum and the fruit is so small. I'm considering pulling out the tree because they are nothing like what I expect from a plum. Maybe I'll wait one more year, and heavily thin the fruit next year, so it would be good for fresh eating.

Stacy Witscher wrote:So I have a plum trees that produces plums that look like the picture but they are very bland. Maybe I need to let them ripen more as others have said but they don't have the nice tartness from the skin that I expect even in an unripe plum and the fruit is so small. ... so it would be good for fresh eating.

My plum tree that I mention in the above post was like this.  The fruit was not good for fresh eating.  The only thing I did with them was to make jelly.  We really enjoyed it as a jelly.

Anne-that’s disappointing for me. I don’t really want to keep a tree that is only good for jams or jellies. We don’t eat much of that. Thanks for the info, I will take it out. Probably put in a Santa Rosa plum.

Cherry Plum. Prunus cerasifera is said to be an ancestor, with sloe, of European Plum. Cherry size fruits are any colour from yellow to purple. As it's non-suckering, it's commonly used as a rootstock for other prunus - European plums are known for suckering.