see it clearly

Plum Tree

Some trees suffer by their associations. Regarding it habitually as a fruit-tree, we are perhaps liable, for instance, to overlook the many other points of interest and the manifold beauty of the Plum. The Drupacea, including the Peaches, Nectarines, Almonds, Cherries, and Cherry-laurels, in addition to the Plums, are plants which are obviously related by the character of their fruits, and less obviously by other structural peculiarities. They are all woody plants, though varying through a wide range of sizes. They have simple leaves, arranged singly on the nodes of their stems, generally more or less toothed along their edges--the teeth often terminating in glands--and having sugar-excreting glands upon their leaf-stalks. The flowers are variously grouped, but are restricted in range of color, being invariably white, pink, or red. They agree, however, in having typically five parts to both calyx and corolla, and, unlike the Apples, Pears, &c., in shedding both these floral whorls when they have "set seed." The stamens are numerous in each flower, and rise separately from the margin of a cup or "receptacular tube," which encloses the ovary without adhering to it, in what is known technically as a "perigynous" manner. The ovary itself consists of a single carpel, terminated above in a well-developed style and stigma and enclosing two ovules, one of which only as a rule reaches maturity as a seed. The "drupe," or "stone-fruit," which gives its name to the sub-order, consists of three fairly distinct layers, the outer skin or "epicarp," the middle pulp or "mesocarp" (which is commonly edible), and the inner "stone" or "endocarp," enclosing the brown-skinned kernel, or seed. Lastly, many of the trees of the group freely exude a very insoluble gum, especially where their bark is injured; and the foliage and kernels of the entire sub-order contain hydrocyanic, commonly known as prussic, acid.

The Peaches, Nectarines, Almonds, and Apricots, some-times referred to separate genera as Persica, Amygdalus, and Armeniaca, have woolly skins to the fruit; the Cherry-laurels (Lauro-cerasus) have their flowers in racemes, their leaves "conduplicate" (or folded together down the middle) in the bud, and their fruits smooth and polished; the Cherries (Cerasus) have their buds and fruits similar to the Cherry-laurels, but their flowers otherwise arranged; whilst the Plums proper, the genus Prunus in the more restricted sense, have their leaves "convolute," or rolled up like a scroll, in the bud, and their fruits covered with a glaucous "bloom" of wax.

Botanists distinguish three varieties of the Common Plum (Prunus communis), though perhaps most country-folk would assert the distinctness, even in a wild state, of more than that number. When the bark is black, the branches spreading in all directions, and every twiglet ending in a thorn; when the leaves are finely toothed and smooth beneath; when the flowers come out before the leaves, and have smooth flower-stalks, and when the globular purple fruit does not exceed half an inch in diameter, they term it Prunus spinosa, the Blackthorn, or Sloe. When the bark is brown, the branches straight, with few thorns, the leaves broader, with larger and blunter serrations, and downy below; when the flowers and leaves expand at the same time, and the flower-stalks are downy; and when the globular fruit is either yellow or purple, and is nearly an inch in diameter, they call it Prunus insititia, the Damson or Bullace. When, lastly, the bark is brown, the branches straight and thornless, the flower-stalks smooth, and the under-surfaces of the leaves only downy along the veins, and when the purple fruit is oblong and over an inch in length, the tree is an escape from cultivation, although termed the Wild Plum (Prunus domestica). The Bullace is a larger shrub than the Blackthorn, and the Plum is a small tree, having generally a distinct main stem five or ten feet high.

Though their distinctive characters are not very constant, these forms or "sub-species" differ to some extent in their geographical distribution. The Sloe or Blackthorn (P. spinosa) is confined to Europe; whilst the Bullace (P. insititia) extends from the Himalayas and the shores of the Caspian, through Armenia, to the north of Africa and to the south of Scotland. The Plum (P. domestica) is either nowhere truly wild, or may be so in Anatolia and the Caucasus, being only naturalized in Europe, and probably of Roman introduction so far as the West, including our own islands, is concerned. In the pre-historic remains from the pile-dwellings in the Swiss lakes, stones of the Sloe and the Bullace occur, but not those of the true Plum.

The close relationship of these forms was early recognized. Thus William Turner, in his "Names of Herbes" (1548), writes:

"Prunus is called in Greeke Coccimelea, in englishe a plum tree, in duche ein pslaumen baume, in frenche Vun prunier. Prunus sylvestris is called in english a slo tree, or a sle tree."

Though, strange to say, Shakespeare never mentions the native forms under their familiar names of Sloe, Blackthorn, or Bullace, he frequently alludes to cultivated Plums, to Prunes, and once (Second Part of Henry VI., act II., scene 1) to Damsons; and there can be little doubt that English gardens in his time contained a considerable number of varieties of the fruit. Gerard, in his "Herbal" (1597), says:

"To write of Plums particularly would require a peculiar volume. . . . Every clymate hath his owne fruite, far different from that of other countries; my selfe have threescore sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare; there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly commeth to our hands others not before knowne."

We cannot but admire the beauty of our common Blackthorn; and yet how often in early spring do we not long to see the last of its beautiful snowdrifts of blossom and of the bitter winds of that "Blackthorn winter" which almost invariably accompanies their presence!

Desolate indeed is the wintry look of its tangle of black thorny boughs and twigs, forming some roadside hedgerow, or in clumps on some bleak hill-side; and desolate does it remain till April, about the middle of which month the blossoms generally appear. From a distance one may then mistrust one's eyesight and wonder if it is indeed a line of lingering snow-drift, brought by the north-east gale of last night, that lies on the slopes of the downs; but on a nearer approach the black boughs can be just discerned, each ending in a rigid spine and clothed in a foamy mass of starry milk-white petals. Then, if the sun glances out between drifting leaden clouds on the snowy branches, as they toss like frothing waves in the blustering breeze, or if the little white-throat be seen dodging amidst the blossom, we forget the presage of inclement weather in the beauty of the plant before us.

When, a few weeks later, its flowers are gone and its leaves appear, the tangled Blackthorn with its strong spines forms a thorough protection to the nests of our feathered friends; and, though perhaps from the resistance which its hard wood offers to the shears, and from its tendency to become straggly, it is not so well adapted for garden hedges as the Hornbeam or Hawthorn, it is both useful and picturesque on the margins of our fields and in our road-side fences. In autumn--

"the ripening Sloes, yet blue,
Take the bright varnish of the morning dew,"

in silent protest against the partial observation that can only allude to Sloes as black. The Sloe has at first the purple-blue bloom of the common garden Plum; but as the fruit ripens, though in the Sloe it does not become sweet as in the Bullace and Plum, it loses the bloom of its youth and beauty, and the smooth round balls, pleasing to birds and schoolboys, though contorting the faces of most of their unwary devourers by their astringency, become of a dull blackish-purple. Still they are not black.

At the present day the green-fruited variety of the Bullace (P. insititia) is commonly called a Damson; but there can be little doubt that originally this name belonged to some cultivated variety, the fruit of which was worth eating, and which came from the East, nominally from Damascus.

As has been already suggested, the Plum properly so-called may in all probability be the artificial product of cultivation rather than a variety existing anywhere in a truly wild state, and was probably introduced by the Romans, by whom it was undoubtedly cultivated on a large scale. Its name in most modern languages is, therefore, as might be expected, derived from the Latin Prunus. Just as the name "Currant" has been extended from the small dried Grapes of Corinth to the Black-, Red-, and White-fruited Ribes of our kitchen-gardens, so the name "Plum" has been extended from the fruits of Prunus to those of other Grapes, more properly known as Raisins. This extension has probably originated in the long-practiced custom of drying both kinds of fruit in the sun. This manufacture, though carried on to a considerable extent in the south of France, from which fact we know the dried fruit mainly as "French Plums," is also a staple industry in Spain and Portugal, and more especially in Bosnia and Serbia.

The cultivated forms of Plum are extremely numerous, the fruit varying in color, from green, pale yellow or red, up to the deepest purple-black or purple-blue, in shape from globular to an elongated oval or egg-shape, pointed or bluntly rounded at either or at both ends, and in size from less than an inch to between three and four inches in diameter. We can readily believe that some of our larger fruit-eating birds may not infrequently swallow the stone of the fruit of the Sloe, which they take whole into their mouths, and thus aid in the dissemination of the species; but it would be difficult to imagine this to occur in the case of the Plum. The cultivated forms vary also considerably in the size and shape of the stones and of the kernels they contain; in the flavor of the fruit, its season of ripening, and other points; and so long-established and physiologically engrained have some of these variations become, that they constitute races which will perpetuate their characters by seed. The Greengages, the true Damsons, and the Egg-Plums, for instance, form races that are often true to seed; but as a matter of practice, layering, or, more often, grafting is most commonly used as the method of multiplication.

It is, of course, mainly as a fruit-tree that the Plum is valued; but if it were not so it might well be esteemed for its timber. The very tough and hard wood of the Blackthorn is never of sufficient girth to rank as timber, but it is proverbial, especially in Ireland, as the material for cudgels, and from its suitable size, strength, and abundance, no wood is better adapted for a farmer's walking-stick. The wood of the Plum is of a beautiful deep crimson color, and is susceptible of a polish, so that it has been to some extent employed in veneering, and is certainly one of the prettiest timbers that we have.

Though associated with disagreeable weather, the Blackthorn when in bloom is a beautiful and characteristic feature of English landscape that we should be loath to lose; and though the Plum, with its snowy blossoms, creates an impression of chillness in spring, the whiteness is in its case relieved by the admixture of delicate young foliage, suggestive in its verdure of the sunny days that are coming to ripen the pale flowers into warm-tinted fruit.