Garden Fruit Tree ID?

[Toadflax]

Can anybody help ID this tree in my garden please - and if it is edible? I suspect it is some sort of plum.

Has lots of plum type fruit at the moment, though quite small (about 1" diameter), when cut open they reveal a central stone with flesh very much like a plum.

Thank you.



Geoff

Fruit hanging on the tree:

Whole fruit, a fruit cut open, and a stone from the fruit (top of picture). Ignore the leaf!

 

[xylaria]

I will plum for the cherry-plum. prunus cerisifera.

It is not a bird cherry for sure.

We have loads of cherry plums in our local park, they all cropped last week. there was far more than we could pick, and stone and make stuff out of of.

 

[Toadflax]

Thanks very much, Xylaria, I'll follow up on that lead to try and get a positive ID.



Geoff

 

[xylaria]

here is picture of a cherry plum

The twigs aren't hairy like plum or bullace. The fruit is edilbe raw unlike a sloe. The fruit comes in differant shades from yellow through reds to purple. The fruit is obviously larger than any of the cherries but the shape is vey simerlar.

 

[Biddlesby]

Is the sloe actually inedible or just unpleasant raw?

 

[bushwacker bob]

Is the sloe actually inedible or just unpleasant raw?

They wont kill you but your a better man than I,if you can make a meal from them.

 

[KAE1]

Badgers absolutely love cherry plums, we have them around our village and the badgers mooch in at night for the windfalls, their latrines are full of the stones. They are very tastey and I often grab a few tubs myself.

 

[Mikey P]

They're that bitter, do you remember the way that people in Warner Bothers cartoons like Sylvester or Wiley Coyote would end up eating ACME Alum powder by mistake and their mouths would practically turn inside out? That's the Sloe, that is!

I would argue that, whilst not poisonous in a raw state, they're inedible because they are so dry and bitter.

Better make sloe gin with them instead...<hic>

 

[xylaria]

For eat ability and toxicology I have developed what I call the MacDonald's scale

1. Staple edible; can be eaten on daily bases without ill effect eg maccyD's blueberry muffin
2. Edible; can be eaten but maybe cause illness in large or repeat doses eg burgers
3. Inedible; unpalatable in normal circumstances eg maccyD's donuts
4. Suspect; produces nausea in some individuals eg hash browns, scrambled egg and milkshakes
5. Poisonous: produces illness in most individauls eg drinking the shortening
6. Deadly poisonous; produces life threatening illness eg drinking the bacterial slime at the bottom of the shake machine.

Under that scale sloes are inedible. Sloe gin is nice though . Cherry plums taste like plums. I made fruit leather with the load I picked.

 

[Toadflax]

Fruit leather seems a good idea, as I have an awful lot of these cherry plums ready to drop off the tree. Do you (Xylaria) have a dehydrator or do you do it in the oven? I don't have a dehydrator (though I've got one on my birthday list...).

Thanks again for the clues on the ID. I'm 99.9% certain that the tree is cherry plum - need to try the fruit tonight to see how edible it is - various sources suggest that edibility as far as taste goes can vary from tree to tree.



Geoff

 

[csoty]

Mirabol&#225;n.
Prunus myrobalana

 

[xylaria]

I use my oven. i don't do kitchen gadgets, total luddite me. 's' or 75c/gas mark half over night. The best stuff i did was blackberry cherry-plum mix. Blackberry is over powering on its own and the plum is too sharp mixed up together worked really good.

Mirabolan is another name for cherry plum. Less confusing, does not sound like a hybred then.

 

[bushtank]

Fruit leather seems a good idea, as I have an awful lot of these cherry plums ready to drop off the tree. Do you (Xylaria) have a dehydrator or do you do it in the oven? I don't have a dehydrator (though I've got one on my birthday list...).

Thanks again for the clues on the ID. I'm 99.9% certain that the tree is cherry plum - need to try the fruit tonight to see how edible it is - various sources suggest that edibility as far as taste goes can vary from tree to tree.



Geoff

i have just picked some off these today and wondered what there were called i thought they were just small plums nice one