North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

FWIW, I was fortunate enough to have gotten samples of beach plums from Ken
Turkington some years ago.  Ken was trying to sort out a collection of
varieties, and he also had access to a lot of wild stuff as well, from
islands off the coast of New England.  Own rooted types seem to be able to
sucker very long distances from the parent plant, and they are apparently
shallow rooted, since they grow in beach sand where the water table is close
to the surface.  Of course their ability to tolerate salt is valuable too.
The fruits are very small, being marble size in most cases, and while most
are blue, there are some yellow selections, too. The small size  means they
aren't that useful for much except jam. The blue ones are usually
astringent.  However, they bloom much later than any other plum and Luther
Burbank was supposed to have used them in breeding a plum that continued to
bloom and set fruit into the middle of summer. 
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, more, plus word on my grape book at
http://www.bunchgrapes.com
 
----------
>From: Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
>To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: Re: [NAFEX] beach plums/pollinating
>Date: Fri, Aug 23, 2002, 8:25 AM
>

>At 02:55 PM 08/23/2002 +0000, Del wrote:
>>My beach plum bloomed  this year - but no fruit set.   I read somewhere 
>>that I need another for pollinating. I suppose it is an ignorant question 
>>, but I have made succcessful grafts of it  on to choke cherry, can these 
>>supply the cross pollination? or, aren't they clones of the same plant - 
>>and so I must buy another?
>
>Yes, Del, they're clones, so you'll either have to get another, or let 
>me(and other NAFEXers) know, and we'll be glad to send scions of those 
>we've got growing.
>Ken Asmus offers seedlings of several selected strains, pretty inexpensive.
>
>Lucky
>