Our garden has an ornamental cherry tree which has always been nice, given fantastic blossom in the spring and much wanted shade at times in the summer. I always thought that it I had planted the tree I would had planted a proper full blown cherry tree as I always feel just a little bit cheated by having something that is so close to bearing yummy fruit and yet it is just there to look nice instead.
Well a bit of a surprise this year as after the blossom had come and gone and the leaves were well established I started to spot one or two small green "berries" appearing. These got larger and larger and it started to look like the tree was beginning to revert back to fruiting (is this possible I ask myself?). Not only were these cherries getting bigger and bigger, but when they started to turn a more red colour they looked like massive really nice cherries worthy of any fruit bowl and I was really starting to get excited.
The weeks went past and more and more of these cherry appeared and as they grew, the more they started to look a bit less like cherries and more like small plums. Not being too up on cherries then I assumed these were just massive plum looking cherries and most eager to taste my first one. Then, a relative who was visiting and knows a lot more about these things than I do and so I showed him the tree and he said it looked like a very promising plum tree to him! Totally puzzled at why this tree would start fruiting after the last 5+ years, he suggested he had never heard of that happening before.
So I picked a "cherry", I eat it, I tasted yummy small and sweet and very juicy plum. What a result, my very own fruiting ornamental plum tree!
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In 1999 I planted “a tree for the millenium. I was sold to me as a wild pear! 2000 came, no blossom. Same for 01,02,03,and 04. In 2005, my “wild pear tree was covered in blossom. Imagine my surprise when, come July, I noticed a few small black fruit, not much bigger than a cherry. On tasting one, guess what. I was eating a delicious plum. Since then, every year, the crop has increased and this year there is a very respectable showing. Not bad for a wild pear tree!
well, most of our plums came off in the wind, but the ones I did get to eat were fantastic!