In the backyard of our rented home there is a tree with small fruit about the size of a cherry. They do not grow in clumps like cherries. They are about the color of a medium red plum, or a lighter colored cherry. Inside the flesh looks like a plum, and it has a flat-ish pit like a plum, and with a substantial amount of fruit around it. We are zone 3 or 4, I think...(north shore of Lake Huron, in northern Ontario, Canada). The tree bark looks similar to a choke cherry tree, but not quite as dark. If this is a good fruit, I'd like to save the "seed", start some trees, and plant them on our property that we can't afford to build on yet. Can anyone help me identify this tree? Can anyone instruct me on how to start a tree from the dropped fruit on t

-- Rheba Beall (rbeall@etown.net), August 30, 2000

Answers

It sounds like a native plum. We have two distinctly different kinds of wild plums growing here (zone 3), one with bigger, more magenta- red fruit, one smaller (cherry sized) with yellow-to-red fruits.

Both kinds seem to sprout up feely from where they fell on the ground around the parent trees until they form an impenetrable thorny thicket (are there thorns about 1.5 to 2 inches long on the tree?). I have tried sowing them places by tossing out the fruit pits there, but that hasn't worked well. If there are any babies growing around the roots or elsewhere on the property, I'd suggest that you dig up a small one now while the roots are manageable and transfer it into a big pot to grow (5 gallon buckets w/holes punched for drainage work). Set it into the ground to prevent root freezing, dig it up and take it with you when you go.

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), August 30, 2000.

Thanks for your response, Julie. The tree doesn't have any thorns. Now that I think about it, I believe in the spring that it had flowers that looked like those on a choke cherry tree (small, five petals, white??). Thanks for the advice about digging up "young 'uns", I hadn't thought of that. (I'm new at this gardening/reaping stu

-- Rheba Beall (rbeall@etown.net), August 30, 2000.

Hi Rheba ~ Julie's my sister, don't get confused -- LOL! I was going to say native plum too, but I didn't know about digging up a little one. So, Julie, where is yours?

ANYWAY, Rheba, I wanted to let you know that there was a post on this forum called something like "It's Wild Plum Time" -- had recipes for making jam with the plums. Julie's made jam from them in the past -- it is REALLY YUMMY! By the way, have you tried one of these fruits? Are you sure they're edible? Maybe take them to your extension office (if you have them in Canada) for a definite identification, since we can't actuallly see them.

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), August 31, 2000.