North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

I could never be bothered to eat grocery plums, in fact I thought I didn't
like plums till I moved to Tennessee and met some little old ladies with
some wonderful plum trees.  They all told me the same thing, that when their
trees were cropping, they would go out and pick up a bowlful of plums for
their breakfast every day.  Alas, I was never able to get one of their trees
going.  I did finally get a sprout on a tiny peice of root started, only to
find it had a virus, so in the end I pulled it up.
      I think they were some kind of Jap-Am cross, bloomed too early for
consistent cropping, but were sweet and juicy and wonderful the years they
did crop.  The trees were apparently sold by some local nursery back in the
40's or 50's, and were on their own roots.  Once someone had a tree
cropping, their neighbors would ask for sprouts.  There were quite a few of
these trees where I found them in Loudon Tennessee, but many are gone now,
and I live a hundred miles away.  I have picked from a number of apparently
American plums here, but have never encountered the larger fruit and very
soft melting flesh of the Loudon plums.  They were red skinned, there are
probably some trees still left.  There was a healthy young one across from
Beulah Taylor's old house on Vale St., if anyone happens to get over that
way.      Donna

P.S.  I was so impressed by these and some yellow European plums I picked
there, trees that cropped without spraying, but I have had no luck with
plums here except for the year I sprayed Surround about every 45 minutes...
well, more like weekly in a very rainy year.  I just don't have time for
that, even if the frosts hadn't pretty well wiped out the plums the last 2
years.