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Rusty Hinge 2 · 14-08-2008, 09:44 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:

They don't even know if it is a natural hexaploid or was bred;
anyway, it is a cross between P. spinosa and P. cerasifera, the
sloe and myrobalan. The wild ones are normally called bullaces
in the UK, but there is essentially no difference between a
damson and a bullace, and some people reserve the name bullace
for small, yellow plums. The first paragraph of the following
abstract explains all :-)

IME bullaces, if set loose and allowed to grow, are borne on much more
slender stock than damsons, which tend to be a chunkier tree altogether.

TAAAW, black bullaces (the fruit) are much more variable than cultivated
damsons, both in shape and size.

Locally, there's a tree I collect bullaces from, and I need a ten-foot
bamboo with a net on top to pick them. These are plump, sweet, and
plum-shaped, though small. Another stand about half a mile away are
little bigger than sloes, and pretty nearly spherical. In a hedge on the
smallholding I used to have, apart from the golden bullaces, there were
big, victoria plum-shaped black bullaces, about the size of the top
joint of a man's thumb.

I suspect that cross-pollination is alive and well...

To make a fruit-picking net: acquire enough thick fencing wire or
similar to make a loop large enough to accept a goodly-sized apple.

Bend it in the middle to make a tapered 'beak' like the spout of a jug,
and bend the rest into the loop.

Using a cloth bag of some sort - stocking, sock, etc, sew, stick or
staple it so that it is fixed to the loop, then lash the loop to a pole.

The 'beak' is so that you can manoeuvre the fruit into the bag, then
draw the loop back so that the stalk is in the point of the beak.

That way, the fruit finds it difficult to foil your intentions.

--
Rusty
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