North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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

	The original tree of this was found by Dr. Maxine Thompson at the farm of the late Clarence Aspinwall just north of Salem, Oregon in the 1960's   Mr. Aspinwall had found the tree on it's own roots in a fence row and planted it in his orchard in the midst of several other European plums which he grew for sale at his fruit stand.  As near as I can tell, the plum seems to be the same as "Miracle" which Burbank sold to the old Oregon Nursery Company.   I made crosses of sweet pit apricots on the stoneless plum trying to get a stoneless plumcot with an edible kernel.  Some of the crosse succeeded, but the seedlings were so weak they died before they could be planted out.   As a control I grew open pollinated seed, which was the source of the seedlings I still have.  
While Mr. Aspinwall's son still has the farm and grows fruit,  the old stoneless tree died some years ago.  The selection was sent to the Germplasm Repository at Davis and I THINK they still have it.  CRFG member Lee Read got some from me and I think he has an own rooted tree.


Anyway, the fruit is more like a Damson than a European type, but it's not unpleasant to eat, just not spectacular.  It's about the size of a jumbo olive.  It can be highly productive, but it's erratic to some degree here.  Since many of the fruits have only a shriveled kernel skin, they probably don't have enough cyanide to hurt, though the gritty stone material could poke your mouth.  If you cooked the whole fruit, you'd want to sieve it to remove the grit.


-Lon Rombough


Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 
For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com
A video about The Grape Grower : http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2008/04/18/the-grape-grower/
On Aug 18, 2008, at 3:04 PM, piper33@verizon.net wrote:

Lon,
Where did these come from? What type of plum do they most resemble in 
form, texture and flavor? Since the cyanide-type chemical is made safe 
by heat, can you cook and eat the whole fruit?
-Mark Lee, Seattle, harvesting figs and rosehips, blackberries ready 
soon


On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at  8:10 PM, Lon J. Rombough wrote:

> This is for anyone who might have interest in breeding stoneless 
> plums. Mine are ripe now and many have viable kernals, even though 
> they lack all or most of the stone. I've grown seedlings of them 
> before and some do carry the stoneless trait. If  anyone else is 
> interested, I can still collect seed for about another day or so. 
> After that, the hot weather and animals will take the majority of 
> them.  Stratify the bare kernels just like seed, but with some 
> fungicide like captan to keep them from rotting until they grow.
> Contact me offlist if you want to try them.
> -Lon Rombough
> Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at 
> http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association 
> "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.
> For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com
> A video about The Grape Grower : 
> http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2008/04/18/the-grape-grower/
>
>
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