North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>]

Mark Angermayer wrote:

Maybe some of the confusion on plum/prune definition could be explained by a comment from Bob Andersen, retired stone fruit breeder out of Cornell.  Perhaps the terminology is changing (at least in the east) to remove the term "prune" applied to fresh market plums.  The comment was written several years ago. 

 

Of course it's pointless to be dogmatic on definitions.  Ultimately a word is defined (or redefined) by consensus of the speaker and the hearer.  For instance, it seems silly that an Englishman would use the term "a flat battery" (tires go flat, not batteries).  But if I'm talking to a Brit, and he mentions his battery is flat, I know he's trying to tell me he has a dead battery, and probably needs a jump.  He defines the word differently than I, and that's OK.

 

 

Bob Andersen:

"It used to be that [eastern] USA fruit growers called European-type plums prunes even if the fruit was sold fresh and not dried.   Now most plum marketers strongly believe that the word prune has negative connotations to most consumers.  They have done market research that reveals that “prune” is associated with old, and we all know old is bad (tongue in cheek)."

 

Reference:

http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/hort/faculty/andersen/New%20England%20Stone%20fruit%20varieties.do.htm

 

Mark

KS

I really liked that article. I bookmarked it so I will discover it again some day.
So... how did you happen to know about that article? Are there others like it at the Cornell site? I tried to find out myself by snipping off the end of the link to have it end with andersen/  and got his biography but no links for articles like this. Then started at the home page etc. but I would never find this NE Stone Fruit article from there either. It makes me wonder what else I might be missing.

Steve in the Adirondacks (Wishing I lived closer to Geneva both for the expertise and for the climate to grow all the fruits discussed in the article.)