Prunus domestica 'BELLAMIRA'® cherry plum

Cherry plum is specific fruit, something between damson and plum, and is believed to be present and popular in Europe since the 15th century. Bellamira® is a German variety, a cross between Mirabelle du Nancy and Cacaks Beste from 1993. It produces rich yellow, spherical, free-stone fruit with red dots when fully mature. The fruit is juicy and sweet, not particularly scented. It is best picked when fully ripe and eaten fresh off the tree. You can make jams and preserves of it, too, and adding a little bit of a different fruit with a sharper flavour will enhance its taste. It ripens a week before Mirabelle du Nancy, i.e. in late August.

Deciduous leaves are mid green, broadly elliptic. White flowers appear in April and withstand spring frost down to -4°C. Cherry plum is an ideal fruit tree for organic farms and even neglected gardens as it requires little or no attention as far as pest protection or fertilizing. In small gardens in can be pruned after flowering but it will crop heavily even if left to its own devices. Small fruit size means less time required for maturing which makes it useful for colder regions where it will ripen later in the season but with equal quality.

Cherry plums have identical growing needs like usual plums – grow them in any medium fertile soil of any pH in full sun and undisturbed by branches of other trees around. Enough moisture will do them good. They can take heavy clay and wind but they do not like humid partial shade where number of fungi diseases develops. Remember that newly transplanted trees may be slow to come into cropping. Hardy to about -29°C.

Last update 23-10-2018