Native Plums (Prunus) of Gloucestershire

The first part of this volume completes Charles Martell’s trilogy of fruit manuals. Having already published Gloucestershire Apples and The Pears of Gloucestershire and Perry Pears of the Three Counties, the Gloucestershire Pomona’s latest volume describes the stone fruit of Gloucestershire. The three volumes together remind us of the debt owed to Charles who, appreciating the rapid loss of our orchard heritage, undertook the mammoth task of tracking down those fruit varieties that still remained, creating the Gloucestershire collections of apples, pears and plums.

The second part describes the stone fruit heritage collection being planted by Gloucestershire Orchard Trust in its orchards at Longney and the purpose thereof. Its aims being not merely to conserve the Gloucestershire plum varieties that have been collected, but also to provide a representative collection of other regional cultivars. It then discusses what is meant by the names plum, bullace, pruin and damson and when and how they arrived in our countryside, with a brief comment on identification. Much of this section was inspired by the presentations and discussions at and following the National Stonefruit Conference organised by the Three Counties Traditional Orchard Project at Hartpury in August 2017, and this contribution is gratefully acknowledged. It concludes by considering the Shadow Orchard and the emergence of plums and other fruit from there into the managed orchard, and looks at the uses of the plums and cherry in recent centuries and today. Each copy of the book will be signed by Charles.