PLUMS are believed to have been the first fruits taken into cultivation, providing man a very long time to fiddle around with their genes. With natural hybridisation further stirring the genomic pot, there are now a bewildering number of ‘types’, although they fall into subspecies groups. The European plums are derived from a blessed, if complex, union consisting of one-third cherry plum, two-thirds blackthorn, plus a suspected plum species of unknown lineage that slipped between the sheets. This resultant plum is Prunus domestica subsp. domestica, whereas damsons (right) and bullaces are lumped together as P. domestica subsp. insititia. The Mirabelle plum, not to be confused with the myrobolan (or cherry) plum, languishes in a genetic backwater of its own. The cherry plum is a summer fruit, so I will not relate its story, beyond saying that it is pleasant, patchily common, does indeed look like a cherry and fruits irregularly due to its reckless winter flowering.
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