“They’re fabulous to have in your own yard since they bloom in the early spring, they’re great for early spring pollinators to nosh on as well,” she said. Laura Klahre has planted several beach plum shrubs at her Blossom Meadow Farm in Southold. “All of us are interested in promoting native species.” “A fair number of homeowners are interested in planting plum trees in their yard,” Wickham explained, and not necessarily because of the fruit, though delicious. He’s since doubled the number of producing plants and is also growing whole shrubs for people to plant at home. Wickham eventually transplanted his beach plum plants to the main farm, which sits between two salt creeks in Cutchogue. Locals and hard-core beach plummers will tell you that the fruit is abundant every other year. “Some years, you’ll have a nice return and some years, almost nothing,” said McCombe, who grows several hundred beach plum plants at Briermere. “There’s a lot of pests and diseases and harvesting is pretty labor intensive.” In addition to the usual variables like weather and pollination, the species is susceptible to brown rot and attractive to plum curculio, a beetle notorious for fruit destruction.īecause of the unpredictable yield and the labor required to prune and pick, beach plums never exactly soared to viability. “There were some challenges to scaling it up,” Uva said. His research focused on attempts to bring the crop into wider cultivation, perhaps as a way for traditional fruit farmers to diversify. “So I thought it was an interesting plant to study.” “It has an environmental stress-tolerance aspect to it,” he said. Uva said he’s been interested in beach plums since his childhood summers on Cape Cod, where you’ll find a plethora of roadside stands selling beach plum concoctions.īeach plums growing at Blossom Meadow Farm in Southold. Nearly 30 years ago, McCombe worked on propagating new plants from their pits and assisted in the research of Richard Uva, Ph.D., who was researching the species in the mid-1990s as a graduate student at Cornell University. Early on, he remembers, his mother and grandmother would pick them. The Sound Avenue property stretches all the way to Long Island Sound.
“They were wild here on the farm,” recalled Clark McCombe, whose family has been farming at Briermere Farms since 1961. You never know from year to year if you’ll get anything at all,” he said.ĭespite their ability to thrive in sandy, salty, windy conditions, growing them commercially proved finicky, too. “There’s a market for but picking them wild is hit or miss. In the late 1970s, Tom Wickham began growing approximately 20 shrubs on farmland the family used to own on Ackerly Pond Lane in Southold. There have been efforts to tame the elusive species. “We all made beach plum jam - no one eats beach plums raw,” he added.
“Beach plums can survive pretty adverse conditions,” explained Tom Wickham, who recalls foraging for them with Parnel, his sister, on the dunes in Napeague and along the bay. Beach plums blossom in May, producing delicate, cloud-white flowers before setting fruit that ripens in shades of purple and dark blue - and, rarely, crimson and gold - in late August. Early settlers and explorers took note of their presence along the coast, and they served as inspiration for naming areas like Plum Island.Ī perennial shrub, the beach plum is native to sandy dunes and grows densely along the Atlantic coast from Maryland to southern Maine. Indigenous people, including the Shinnecocks, collected the tart, cherry-like fruits. The native beach plum, or Prunus maritima, offers a glimpse into the past. Unless you make it yourself, you’ll likely seek it out from one of several local farms that release a limited stock of the ruby red jams, jellies and syrups that are known to sell out quickly. You make a big mess and then you enjoy eating it later.”īeach plum jam isn’t the type of product you’ll find on a supermarket shelf. “It can be a lot of work, but it’s something you do together. She places the emphasis on “we,” cautioning that this isn’t a solitary activity, but a social one.
“We would make a day of it,” explained Parnel Wickham, a Cutchogue resident whose familial roots in the area can be traced back to 1699. It’s a coastal tradition on par with learning to sail, build a sandcastle, catch a fish.įor others unfamiliar with the fruit, the appeal of the beach plum can be shrouded in secrecy.
Matchbook font Patch#
Generations of East Enders can recall foraging for beach plums along the shore, scouting for a patch of the shrubs, gnarled and windswept from years of surviving the elements.Ĭoveted, swear-you’ll-never-tell spots, family jam recipes and stories of collecting the dark, tannic fruits on late summer afternoons have been passed down, cherished through the ages.
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