Jul 20 2007
Cherry plums: a promise fulfilled
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 The promise of summer fruit Cherry plum blossoms early in the winter |
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Five months after the cherry plum blossom first broke February’s wintry spell, the fruits are beginning to ripen. Trees in Suffolk are bearing good crops - despite frosts in March, a hot and dry April and unseasonally cold, wet weather since.
Cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera also known as myrobalans) vary in colour from a deep, almost ox-blood, red to pale yellow, with the fruit ripening any time from mid July to late August. A small group of trees along a hedge-line can give a good harvest over several weeks.
Cooking and eating cherry plums
The fruit are versatile and delicious. Taste and texture, like the colour, vary between trees, but most of the fruit are excellent eaten raw. Cherry plums can be substituted for ordinary plums or damsons in almost any recipe, from cobbler to chutney. With a high pectin content, they’re ideal for jams and jellies (the Cottage Smallholder has good recipes for both chutney and jelly). Alternatively, try pressing them for their sweet juice.
Finding cherry plums
Cherry plums are common across Britain, particularly south of the Wash-Severn line (as the Science and Plants for Schools website’s distribution map illustrates), but too often overlooked. By late August, most of the fruit ends up as a jammy mass beneath the trees.
The fruit are admittedly somewhat difficult to spot when ripe, the bright colours masked by the dense green foliage, but their early blossom is easily spotted in the winter - it’s worth noting the sites of trees for summer foraging. Cherry plum trees are frequently found in small groups along hedgerows and garden boundaries, while a purple leaved and fruited variety is often grown in suburban streets.
The cherry plum is sadly neglected by some writers on wild food. It is unaccountably omitted from Roger Phillips’ otherwise excellent Wild Food (Natural History Photographic Guides), while Richard Mabey cursorily dismisses it in his classic Food for Free, suggesting that the trees rarely produce fruit, and that, even when they do, it’s only palatable if sweetened and cooked. I’ve enjoyed delectable sweet fruit every summer for more than 10 years - perhaps a consequence of the changing climate.
Though neither cherry nor plum (but a parent, with blackthorn, of the domestic plum), cherry plums are often mistaken for wild plums. Escaped domestic plums (Prunus domestica) are also found in the wild, their fruits as various as damsons, bullaces, greengages, ordinary plums and the small, yellow, cherry-plum-like mirabelle. All are superb fruit and worth gathering wherever they’re found.
(This post is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by In Mol Araan)
[...] of the cherry plum blossom in late February for me marks the turn of winter, the first promise of the fruits of the summer ahead. Suddenly winter’s drab colours are enlivened by stretches of brilliant white blossom on [...]
We have one of these at the end of our drive. I’ve often eaten the fruit, and often wondered what it was (too much reliance on the wonderful Roger Phillips!). Thanks for this
Joanna
joannasfood.blogspot.com
I’ve never heard of these before. Thanks!
Very interesting. Never heard of this growing here. I wonder if it’s called something else in the states?
Cherry plums are also known as myrobalans (along with various other unrelated fruit) and there’s a popular variety (with pink flowers, red leaves and dark red fruit) called Pissard’s plum. Perhaps they’re better known by these names in the States?
Very interesting post. According to my dictionary, in Italy a cherry-plum is called ‘mirabolano’ a nice-sounding word I have never heard before.
I’m staying with my boyfriend near Great Yarmouth and went for a walk along the Yare near Burgh Castle today. The trees are absolutely laden with fruit this year and I brought a bag of mixed yellow and red plums home to eat. I hope to go and collect a lot more before I go back to London!
To continue the question of the naming of cherry plums, I’ve just learnt from a wonderful post at Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook that they’re are known as Prunes Saint Jean in France, as they ripen (in France) on the festival of St John the Baptist, 24th June. There’s a wonderful photo of cherry plums for sale at a market in Lyon.
Thank you for stopping by, Nick. You’ve written an interesting article. I wonder if there might be an association here in France devoted to saving this kind of plum here, perhaps something can be done to trade or exchange this plum to save the historic trees that are in danger of blight here.
My Dad discovered these last year growing in abundance round where he lives (Northants). What was quite interesting is that, while most of the trees had very sweet fruit, every so often you’d come across one with quite sour fruit.
I’m going to encourage him to go out foraging for me and to bring me some back for jam making - I think a combination of the sweet and sour would do well
I live in the U.S in a small mountain town called Placerville in Northern California. We have one of these trees growing on our property. It is just about ready to pick. The skin of the fruit is a little too tart still so we’ll give them a week or so before trying again. It seems to like the climate up here as well.