Do you know mirabelle plum ?

[samyaza]

I'd like to speak about a fruit which has been locally grown for centuries in my region. It's named mirabelle, a kind of very sweet and fragrant yellow plum.





It's very well-known in France but I don't think so for other countries, especially USA.

Contrary to most of other fruiting trees, mirabelle plum doesn't need to be grafted but reproduce by root shoots.

About fifty years ago, its farming began to expand, but the heirloom varieties made fragile fruits ( they're usually shaken down from the tree ) and the production was irregular. Researchers started to breed it with other plums and new varieties came out with thicker skin, harder flesh, and produce far more but, for someone like me who knows the true taste of a mirabelle, the new one is very poor. It stays greenish yellow like it wouldn't be ripe, with poor fragrance. Most of people don't know or just don't care. Food industry only cares about sugar and acid content, so, who cares ?

In addition, they're now reproduced by grafting. In the past, the tree didn't do outside of my region but new varieties can do wherever. So, an IGP was made ( something like an AVA that can be applied to any food product, submitted to authorization ) and local producers of Lorraine sell their production to higher price.

In a supermarket, I found mirabelle plums far earlier than in the orchards here marked "Origin: France". I know it comes from Bordeaux region. Most of people don't know it and it's not written anywhere. Consumers think mirabelle still comes from Lorraine and they can't make any difference. They are fooled, but in fact, the new mirabelle, from Lorraine or somewhere else, it's the same !

As always, they're a world between what consumers think they buy and reality.

For dessert this lunch, it's mirabelle tart made from my orchards !

[cortona]

wel, that is something interessant, but talking about plums here in tuscany we have something if possible more interessant a plum that come true from seeds wath we call "coscia di monaca" it flawor is complex but best to pick it a bit unripe.

[Tom Wagner]

Just in case anyone wants to try the Mirabelle...I located a source here in Washington ....about 100 miles south of me that has the trees. Available only bare root in late Jan.Feb 2012.

[samyaza]

You should try it, Tom ! The taste is very unique for a plum. I think cultivar 858 should be flavourful as it has the red spots on the fruit that say "Im bursting with sunshine !".

cortona : it's impressive how coscia di monaca looks like "quetshe", another plum from the region. The taste is good when full ripe but better dried or cooked.

[cortona]

yep, it realy amazing! do your come true from seeds? probably the fruit of the coscia di monacaare a bit more long(i try to do some photos in the next days to show yo) for my personal preference the best is wen it are a bit unripe because wen it are ripe it are so sweet that can be ...too much! dried fruits are the use in past years. i've see around some tree that produce bigger fruits but almost inferior as flawor

[samyaza]

Quetsche, as mirabelle, Reine-Claude or Damas can reproduce quite faithfully from seed. Once, my grandfather planted a mirabelle tree that he took in an orchard and it was grown from seed, it's quite common. The tree was two weeks later than the others but the fruit was the same. The fact to take root shoots is just an easy way to get a lot of clones as these trees are very prone to. It also avoid hybridation between different plum cultivars.

In fact, quetsche is acid and a bit astringent if it's not well ripe :


The flesh is also hard and green.
But when the fruit is deep purple ( not the band ahah ) as on the first picture, the flesh is almost yellow, tender and flavour is very nice and sweet. It's a bit complicated for children or gringos to see the fruit maturity so they usually spit it out

I know someone who has yellow quetsches, it's a bit rare, even here.

What is cool with plum is that it has a lot of local cultivars that nobody knows elsewhere. I'm sure we only know a tiny part of its diversity.

[cortona]

yep, diversity in the plums are greath, i've joined a group on facebook devoted to the old italian strains of fruits and i'm amazed about how many cv exist in the past and the possibility to save it(and of course how good the fruit are...)

[blueadzuki]

back when I was In colledge, there was a largish plum tree that, I realized much later in my life was most likey a form of mirabelle (I base this guess on the fact that it had fruit that was both the right size for a mirabelle, and more importantly the right color [some mirabelles are a shade of yellow I'd describe as being closer to orange or apricot.). It grew, oddly in was was basically a planter made by the corner of two streets and the walls of two buildings. How the thing survived there I never figured out, especially because the two buildings were an apartment complex and a bar popular with the colledge students (maybe that was the secret, all those upchucking students kept it well fertilized). I never screwed up the courage to put one of the fruits in my mouth, but my plant science professor did (when I brought him one to confirm it was a plum) He said it was rather sour.

[marches]

We have damsons growing wild everywhere. They're crosses of the cultivated European plum with the native Sloes (tart wild plums). There's some nonsense about them originating in Damascus (hence the name), but it's unlikely - the climate isn't right for a start.
They were used for hedging along with Sloes because they're spiny and can keep stock enclosed.

They were traditionally used for cooking into jams and pies, sort of like wild grapes in America. Too hard and bitter to eat raw. Guess they're like a "cooking plum". They thrive in colder, wetter areas where European plums are more marginal such as Shropshire and NW England.

I think most regions of Europe have their own wild plum populations. Germany has something but I forget what they're called.

[kathy]

Can you help me identify a fruit 'bush' that is growing in my fence row? It is very fast growing. In the spring when it bloomed with whitish/pinkish blossoms it was about 2 1/2 to 3 feet now in july it is 5 ft and about as wide. It has a stone fruit (cherry size) that grow directly from the branch, no stem. It is ripening from a yellow to a reddish yellow. The leaves are serrated but more severely than picks of cherry or plums (more like a rasberry leaf) And shaped like a maple leaf. The leaves have a furry feel. They are bright green. The flesh in the fruit clings to the stone and is quite juicy. I pictures but I don't know how to upload on here. The closest to the look of the fruit is the mirabelle plum.