North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>]

Claude, is your Mirabelle of decent quality, and suitable for fresh eating?

I would be surprised if some of the settlers of New France had not 
planted seeds of Mirabelles from France. I would also have expected them 
to try grafted trees from France at some point.

Stanley is a shade hardier than Mount Royal (though liable to black 
knot, and from my limited observation not very good quality on peach 
soils at least for fresh eating) and if I remember rightly it came from 
a cross between Prune D'Agen and Grand Duke; (I forget the direction) 
i.e. old European plums.

But also, around 1985 I observed in an old plum orchard in the Niagara 
Peninsula, several trees with small, round, rather bland fruits of 
various colours including yellow, which I deduced were sprouts from 
rootstocks of perhaps St. Julien, where the tops of commercial cultivars 
had died. And (for the benefit of the newbies), damsons, Mirabelles, and 
the St. Julien rootstocks are subgroups of Prunus insititia of Europe.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario




Claude Jolicoeur wrote:
> A 16:54 09.11.16 -0500, vous avez écrit :
> > Is your Mirabelle one that was bred in Quebec or has been there for a
> > while, and have others in 4b had success with it?
>
> I also have a plum which I think is a Mirabelle. It is a small round yellow
> plum, a bit larger than the Blue Damas but smaller than Mont Royal. It is
> an ungrafted tree that was propagated by root sucker. It is quite hardy in
> my zone 4 near Quebec but some winters does suffer from the cold.
>
> If it's not a Mirabelle, it could possibly be a Reine-Claude seedling,
> although Reine-Claude are normally much larger fruits.
>
> Claude Jolicoeur