OT - help identifying this fruit tree please

[Dave Baker]

At the end of our road on a patch of council land is a tree that bears yellow/green plum-like fruit at this time of year. In flavour they are exceeding sweet and delicious and doth greatly please the palate. The ripe fruit are most wondrously uniform in size being all nearly exactly three barleycorns in length, or one inch in the modern parlance, and a little less in width by the measure of one half of a barleycorn.

The court artist has, at our command, made the most perfect representation of the fruit and leaves which can be viewed in the following galleries.

fruit don't have any waxy bloom on them like some plums. I did first think they were probably greengages of some kind but those are supposed to have a crease on one side of the fruit and these don't being perfectly symmetrical.

So what are they and how does one grow them? I'd like to either grow some from the stones in the fruit if that's possible although Google seems to think that doesn't always result in a true copy of the parent plant, or from cuttings, so I can take them with me when I move house.

[Dave Baker]

This pic looks as close to the fruit on my tree as I can find online.

more closely at some I've just picked there is actually a hint of a crease on each fruit but it's little more than a thin line running down one side rather than an indentation.

[Huge]

They look very much like the greengages we used to have.

As for propogating them, I'd have a look on t'web for how to propogate plums, since they're a member of the plum family.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If they are small with not much flesh, its almost certain you have a variety of mirabelle.

French make wonderful tarts with them. They are generally not regarded as fruit trees here, more as rough hedging plants.

I have a fairly large tree in my front garden as well as quite a lot in the hedges here.

I suspect they are the prototype from which the greengage was developed (and there are at least half a dozen varieties of that)

The black alternative is the bullace, which unlike the sloe or the damson, is actually quite sweet.

Although Mirabelles are pretty good, gages are better! In a good year ours are utterly deliciousness and crop in the '5 tesco bags a tree' quantity and are totally edible raw..nectar sweet. Or pick early and freeze after stoning.

[robgraham]

I would agree with the mirabelle diagnosis. There are a wide range of these from small cherry size to some 30mm in diameter - and a range of colours from yellow through to dark red.

We've just come back from in-land Bulgaria where we helped pick the bigger ones to make rakia by the country people. Rakia is the equivalent of grappa in Italy and is a distilled spirit made from any fruit. Our hosts were scathing about regulations banning distillation. I was interested in the fact that fermentation was on natural yeast and sugar, and only a little water was added.

Rob

[John Rumm]

I would go with greengage as well. We have a tree in our garden that produces something very similar looking - absolutely delicious - and normally scoffed by the blinkin birds before anyone else gets a look in!

[chudford]

They are called bullaces, a form of wild plum. Google has lots of information on them