Three of the most farmed plum species have never been found in the wild
Plums may be among the very first fruits humans domesticated. Three of the most widely grown species exist only around human settlements, with no known wild populations, and plum stones turn up at Neolithic sites alongside olives, grapes and figs. Today China grows more than half the world's crop.
The European plum, Prunus domestica, has been traced to the mountains of eastern Europe and the Caucasus, while Prunus salicina and Prunus simonii came from China. The food historian Ken Albala instead places the fruit's origin in Iran. Plums reached Britain from Asia, and a 12th-century farming manual by Ibn al-'Awwam discusses growing them in Andalusia. English monasteries cultivated them in the Middle Ages, and Chaucer mentions a garden with ploumes and bulaces.
Interest surged in the 17th and 18th centuries, when greengages got their English name and the Mirabelle became established. The English breeder Thomas Rivers produced varieties such as Early Rivers and Czar that are still well regarded. The Victoria, first sold in 1844, is said to owe its fame more to clever marketing than to superior taste.
The word travelled a long road: Old English plume came from Latin prunum, borrowed from Greek, which probably took it from an unknown language of Asia Minor. By the late 18th century plum also meant something sweet or desirable, as in sugar plum.
Botanically the fruit is a drupe, its juicy flesh wrapped around a single hard stone, and its seeds contain amygdalin, a cyanide-releasing compound. Commercial trees are pruned to 5 or 6 metres but can reach 12 unchecked. In a good year about half the blossoms become fruit. The so-called Japanese plums that dominate fresh-fruit shelves, big, juicy and long-lasting, mostly descend from Chinese species despite their name. Europe favours types like the astringent damson, and plums end up fresh, dried as prunes, in jam, or fermented into wine and brandy. In 2023 China produced 55 percent of the global total.
Source: Plum
