The Plum - which I will always recognize in future after reading-up on the blossom shown here - has many forms and varieties... my favorite being the Mirabelle, which I have never seen growing in England, but is common here in France. It was probably cultivated for European soils by the Romans, from origins in the Anatolia Caucasus. Shakespeare refers to cultivated Plums, Prunes and Damsons... and many gardens of his generation must have contained a large variety of those fruits.
His contemporary, Gerard, in his own 1597 Herball wrote... "To write of Plums particularly would require a peculiar volume... Every clymate hath his owne fruite, far different from that of other countries; my selfe have threescore sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare; there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly commeth to our hands others not before knowne."
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