North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Richard Wagner" <rewagner@centurytel.net>]

I suspect that the name 'Bubblegum' was chosen because it was supposed to 
taste somewhat like a cherry. Cherry is the flavoring used in bubblegum.

Black ice is reported to have been chosen as being descriptive, black on the 
outside and white on the inside.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Melissa Kacalanos" <mijwiz@yahoo.com>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Toka plum


> Ernest, I'm strongly suspecting that your "Toka" isn't a Toka at all, but 
> a mislabeled cherry-plum, with that awful-tasting Western sandcherry in 
> its ancestry. The nursery must have been wrong about either the "Toka" or 
> the "Cherry Plum" part of the label (or both parts I suppose.) The fact 
> that your  tree is still alive in the cold, plus the fact that the plums 
> taste bad, both point to the conclusion that it's a cherry-plum.
>
> Maybe I just don't want anyone bad-mouthing 'Toka' since I put a lot of 
> thought into choosing this cultivar myself last year, and I'm hoping the 
> fruit are good.
>
> I've been reading about some new cherry-plums that supposedly taste better 
> than the old cultivars, after some more generations of breeding. Lydecker 
> is a new cultivar that's hardy to zone 3b. In taste tests, fresh tree-ripe 
> Lydecker plums were preferred to Asian plums that had been picked 
> underripe in California, warehoused for a while, shipped across the 
> country, warehoused some more, and then fed to taste-testers.
>
> Lydecker is being marketed under the name 'Blackice' which doesn't sound 
> much better than 'Bubblegum' to me. Who thinks of these marketing names?
>
> There are so many interesting plums out there, I wish I had more room to 
> grow them. I might have to learn how to graft a few more varieties onto 
> the few trees I have.