![]() ![]() The red-purple fruit are a similar color to the leaves also, which may help protect them. In a good year, if spring starts early, a few of these trees will produce a later crop as well (one of the benefits of a long bloom period).Įven birds, squirrels, and other wildlife may give it a pass just because they think it’s the same sour fruit they can get from the other trees. ![]() If you are lucky enough to find one that tastes better than the others, remember where it lives. In years of searching, I’ve found a few great ones. So the oddball tasty plum tree is more likely to be an outcast in someone’s yard or on a hill some distance from the main line of purple leaf plum trees. Trees mutate or spawn sports, especially when they grow up from seed rather than being grafted. The secret is that there are some odd trees that produce quite edible fruit. But they make good jam (with liberal additions of sugar and perhaps some other fruit that is available at that time of year, such as some berries or an aromatic lemon). If you pick some of those fruits and bite into one, even when it’s as ripe as it can be, it will be sour enough to pucker your mouth. If you see a street with a line of them and visit them around fruiting season, you’ll find fruits on only some of them, usually less than half. It looks like a big cherry and the tree produces them relatively early in the year, like a cherry would. Most of the time, it’s not a particularly tasty fruit. Their striking color offsets any greens from grass or bushes or other plants.Īnd while these trees are grown for their looks, some of them fruit as well. For the rest of the growing season, the trees are covered in these dark purple leaves. New leaves can be slightly green at first, but they purple up quickly. Within weeks (or even days if spring weather is warm), the flowers are followed by the leaves. In springtime, they bloom with sweet smelling pink blossoms much like those of a cherry tree. Purple leaf plum trees are beautiful nearly all year long. So I don’t really care what people call these purple leaf plum trees. Some have been cross pollinated to create hybrid fruits like plumcots and pluots and even pluerries (plum + cherry), as I have written about previously. Stone fruit trees (cherries, plums, peaches, and nectarines) are closely related. As for the plum versus cherry distinction, a lot of wild and native plums are more like cherries and often called cherries. Plenty of purple fruits and vegetables are called red (such as “red” cabbage, which is clearly purple). And, of course, they have been called flowering or ornamental plums.Īny of those monikers might be accurate. Others call them purple or red leaf cherry trees, since the few fruits they produce are closer in size to a cherry. Some people call them red leaf plum trees. Am I the only one who thinks that a real fruit tree would be a better choice in those spaces? I want edible cherries and pears, not ornamentals!īut then there are the purple leaf plum trees, which I like. The rest of the year, these trees occupy prime real estate in the landscapes of parks and streets and peoples’ yards. Most of them are grown for the beauty of their blossoms, but these last only a few weeks per year, at most. Ornamental versions of fruit trees often disappoint me. ![]()
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