Diane,

There are many native plums and it can be hard to tell them apart, but here's some info that should help.

Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia), and AKA Sandhill Plum, Sand Plum, Red Plum and Western Plum: These are small, very twiggy, thicket-forming tall shrubs to small trees that top out aroung 10-12' tall, depending on their soil and annual rainfall. The branches are slender and have reddish new growth, especially in spring. The leaves are lanceolate and about 3-4" long.

The Chickasaw Plum branches sometimes are a bit prickly or spiny. They have white flowers, or sometimes pink flowers, that are about 1/2" across and appear in huge numbers in early spring, usually in March or April. These trees can produce either yellow or red fruit. In our climate the fruit ripens form May through July. These are commonly found in old pastures that aren't mowed, along fencelines/roadways, and sometimes on the sunny edges of woodlands. They are most often seen in Oklahoma, Arkansas and the eastern half of Texas. Though small, the fruit is tasty and makes great jam or jelly.

Sand Plum (Prunis texana) is a very dwarf plant that is more of a shrub than a tree. The branches are irregular and the blooms are white and appear shortly efoe the oval leaves. The plums are a little fuzzy, somewhat resembling the fuzziness of a peach but not quite that fuzzy. These grow in poor,disturbed soil. More often seen in Texas, but are sometimes seen then in southern and eastern OK.

Mexican Plum (Prunus mexicana): These are tree plums and although several of them may sprout close to one another, they are not thicket plums in the same way that Chickasaw Plums are. These are small, fairly slender trees, although they can get pretty big once they're 20-30 years old. Their leaves are much broader than those on the thicket plums and are oval, 1-3" long, and have serrated edges. The flowers are pink to white and are about twice as large as the flowers on Chicksaw plums. These trees have fairly short lateral branches, at least until they get very old. Their fruit are yellowish/reddish when mature. The wild critters love these plums and you have to fight them for them. Often these trees are found alongside creeks are drainage gullies or sloughs. At our house, these bloom slightly later than the domesticated plums and usually slightly earlier than the Chickasaw Plums.

Propagation of wild plums is not that hard, but cold stratification is required because all native plums have a dormant embryo that won't germinate until it has a period of cold stratification. The Mexican Plum also needs a period of after-ripening before the cold stratification begins.

To Collect Seed: Collect seed only after fruit is firm, filled out and has turned a dark red (or dark yellow in the case of the yellow ones) to indicate the fruit is fully ripened. You can't collect seed by the calender since seed maturity varies from year to year and even from plant to plant. Clean the seeds from the pulp and then air dry before storing, but do not overdry because it will put the seeds into a deep dormancy that can be hard to break. Depending on your humidity at the time you collect, clean and dry your seed, you may need to dry the seed for only a few hours or perhaps a day. Store at 31-41 degrees Fahrenheit. You don't dry Mexican Plum seed much, if at all, because it lowers their viability.

To Germinate Mexican Plum: Collect seed in late June to July, clean the seed, and then put them immediately in warm stratification in flats indoors, or in a raised bed of moist sand outdoors and leave them there until Sept. or Oct. With Mexican Plum, fresh seed quickly loses its viability during storage, so with these plums you want to plant the seed right after it is collected.

To cold stratify, move the warm-stratified seeds to cold stratification at no warmer than 41 degrees for 60-90 days. Check weekly. When you see seeds starting to sprout, remove the seed from the flat of sand and plant either in the ground where you want the tree to ultimately grow, or plant them in deep pots. Normally, once your seeds have been cold stratified, they'll germinate in about 3 weeks if they are viable seed.

To Germinate Chickasaw Plum, you pretty much do the same thing you did for Mexican Plum, except instead of planting immediately and holding them for fall, you warm stratify for only a couple of weeks and then cold-stratify. At the time you collect these seeds, about 70% of them are viable, but you can increase their chance of sprouting with that 2 weeks of warm stratification.

If you want to plant the Chickasaw plums directly outdoors instead of germinating them indoors, keep them in cold storage in your fridge until September. Plant them in the ground in late September and keep the area lightly mulched to keep weeds down until your seeds germinate. The direct-planted seeds will germinate when temperatures are between 50 degrees and about 75-80 degrees.

If you want to, you can start all Prunus species from cuttings....either dormant hardwood, softwood, or semihardwood. The best cuttings (or at least the easiest ones) are those from semihardwood cuttings taken in summer. Take the cuttings from the tips of branches, from new stems that are still flexible at the end and only just beginning to turn woody at the base. You don't want them too soft because they'll rot before they can root, so be sure the base is slightly woody for the best results. Take half the leaves off your cuttings, stick them in a rooting hormone or willow water if desired, and plant them in a peat/perlite mix. Keep in a humid area and mist often. You could get good roots within 30 days. Then you can harden off your plants and plant them. I wouldn't plant them in full sun until fall though.

It is a LOT easier to just ask a friend or neighbor if you can dig up some of the smallest trees from their pasture or fenceline and transplant them to your place. We've dug up and moved Mexican Plums out of our woodlands in the fall/winter (from October through about early February)when they were 2' to 3' tall and they have fruited the following spring.

Dawn

Thanks so much, Dawn!

It would appear that they are the Chickasaw plums, I believe. There was another patch, however, that had larger plums and were only 4-5' tall, whereas the bigger patch were 10-12' tall with smaller plums. So maybe there were two types or maybe just a slightly different spot resulting in different characteristics. Regardless, they're all yummy!

I will be digging up a few starts next time we're there (no room last night) but I'm still going to play with the seeds.

Diane,

You're welcome.

I think that there are many forms of Chickasaw Plum and some are genetically inclined to stay smaller and some get larger.....just like OP tomato plants. I see a lot of variation in plant height/fruit sizes here, but almost all the ones I see here are the red fruited ones. I seldom see a yellow-fruited one and don't know why.

The Mexican Plum trees for the most part stay fairly small and even the ones on the edges of our woodland that are very old (huge trunks) seldom get more than about 15' tall. However, there is one deep in the woodland that is about 35' tall. I don't know if it is just a really, really old tree (its trunk isn't that much larger in diameter than the 15' tall ones) or if it stretched and grew taller over the years trying to compete with surrounding trees for sunlight.

The Mexican Plum tree we dug and moved to the front yard about 5 years ago reached about 8 or 9' in height in just a year or two but hasn't gained much height since then, so maybe it is genetically programmed to stay shorter.

Dawn

I believe the sand plum you refer to is Prunis Maritima, or the Beach Plum-red,yellow and a blue/purple ,all ripen just a couple weeks overlapping, the earliest is the yellow,then red then blue, all prunis maritima-believe Yale University is growing those in the hope of making the fruit bigger than the seed...and is known well on the Cape.(Mass),beach plum sauces and jams are often from there.
Think the wild plum you refer to may be American Plum-and the fruit is a little bigger than Maritima,and more oval shaped-quite tart/sour, wildlife food-matures 15-20 feet, whereas the beach plum usually around 6 feet.
The New Hampshire State Nursery grows both of these , the maritima in varied colors, mixed seed, grown from their own seed source,as well as the american plum , both sold in early spring , lifted as saplings from the ground by the nursery's own crew in Boscawen, New Hampshire, and csn be shipped by UPS