Plums

For millennia Native Americans harvested indigenous wild plums, which generally grow on shrubs or shrublike trees. Compared with modern commercial plums, most native fruits are small and tart and have astringent skins; these characteristics are not ideal for fresh fruit but lend character to preserves, sauces, and wines, their chief uses. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries some farmers grew American plums commercially, and fruit breeders used them in hybridizing new varieties because of their adaptation to local environments. Some of the best known species are the beach plum, Prunus maritima, native to the coastal Northeast; the Sierra plum, P. subcordata, indigenous to northern California and Oregon; and P. americana, native to the central states.