Back in August of 2023, I came across my first stand of wild Prunus americana, the American plum.
That month I wrote:
I’ve always been fascinated with wild fruits. Some of them are quite good! We found that to be the case with these wonderful American plums I harvested by the side of the road in Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee border.
We’d never seen this species before, but it was covering the roadside in large patches. After spotting the first few clumps of trees and seeing them hung with red fruits, I had to pull over the van at the next convenient spot and see what sort of fruit they were.
(My wife and children are used to me pulling over the car for random plants. In fact, I think this may be one of the reasons why my teens prefer to drive when we are on long road trips.)
My guess was that they were a crabapple, or perhaps a mayhaw. They were hard and red. I filled my hat and brought it back to the car, then had one of the kids open one of them with my pocketknife while I was driving.
To my delight, it had a pit inside. Wild plum! But it was a species we hadn’t seen in Florida or Alabama. The leaves are much larger than those of the wild plums I’ve seen here, and the fruit is much redder.
We identified it as being the native American plum. My wife made a really good jam from the fruit, and I saved and stratified the pits in the fridge. Most of them sprouted in a few months, and I potted them up and put them in the greenhouse.
Two months ago, while they were dormant, I potted them up into larger pots. Some of them had grown thick, red-orange roots right through the bottom of their pots and through the nursery fabric into the hard clay soil beneath the greenhouse. I cut the roots with a machete and left them in the ground, then potted up the trees. They’ll do fine, being bare root…
…but what I didn’t expect was to have those roots in the greenhouse sprout new shoots and leaves!
This is one tough plum!
Today I looked them up again and found a very good post on the species by Akira Silver, author of the book Trees of Power.
When I first heard about American plums I was fascinated. A native plum tree that forms thickets and produces huge amounts of small delicious plums!, I had to experience them. It was years before I found a stand of American plums growing in the wild. Gnarly little trees growing together in a thicket along a stream, they were covered in bright white blossoms. I have since grown out hundreds of seedlings every year and planted as many as I have time for. The American plum (prunus Americana) is a species worthy of the attention of native plant gardeners, wildlife enthusiasts, homesteaders, and even commercial orchardists. Prunus Americana is just one of several species of native plums. They are extremely adaptable having a native range that stretches across the Northeast, the Southeast, and over through the prairies up to North Dakota. They appear to tolerate just about any soil. I have seen them thriving in heavy clay, dry gravelly soils, and in flood plains. I have read that they can reach heights of 35 feet, but this has not been my observation at all. Every time I have found a stand in the wild, it has never been more than 12 feet tall (I live in upstate NY, so perhaps climate plays a factor in determining size).
American plums are thicket forming. The trees send out runners with sprouts popping up as far away as 10 feet from the base of the trunk. The trees can be thorny. This varies considerably between individuals, but most do have short sharp spurs.
American plums hit the gate running. They seem to explode the first few years until flowering begins. I have grown American plums from seed that reached 8 feet with branches their first year. Typically they grow somewhere between 2 and 5 feet the first year. Once they begin flowering and fruiting, growth slows way down and lots of small branches and root suckers develop.
The root suckers can be very prolific. In yards, they are controlled by mowing. However, on the edge of a garden bed they can be difficult to deal with.
And they grow through greenhouse plastic!
I think I’ll add some of these trees to the edge of my property to make thickets. Akira has a picture in his article of a three-year-old American plum tree covered in blooms.
Fast to fruit, hard to kill, and a good native edible?
Sign me up!
I’m very glad I planted them. We have about sixty in the nursery right now. We’ll see how they fruit in Lower Alabama. I don’t care if they sucker all over – we’ll just keep them at the edges and enjoy them there. Right plant, right place. Plus, they can be a rootstock for other plums, which will be fun. In the past I did that with Chickasaw and had great success.
I love native fruits. What fun to have a new one to try. Just gotta wait another year or so and see if we get fruit.
