[shakeyruth]

There is a lot of confusion here but I have lived in four different parts of England where bullace described a wild plum that was spherical and apricot coloured (Stanbury nr. Haworth W. Yorks, Castle Hedingham, Suffolk, Weald of Kent). In Castle Hedingham (actually, a small village called Gestingthorpe, the spherical dark form (like a sloe but as sweet as the golden form) was first described to me as a cherry plum by the locals.

On horticultural websites the apricot coloured variety is often referred to as Golden Sphere and as a mirabelle with origins possibly in Ukraine. I have recently bought such a tree in the hope of rewarding my youthful reminiscences of clambering in thorny trees during the back end of summer in three counties and slurping down this exquisitely sweet and flavoursome fruit. Alas, these cultivar fruit are considerably larger and plum like and have either responded to selection or are indeed a separate cultivar.

Now that I live in Lancashire a tree producing apricot coloured fruit in a hedgerow near Clitheroe, identical to my memories of this droop in W. Yorks, Suffolk, and Kent, is also known as a bullace by the locals.

The conventional wisdom here seems to be largely split between those who view the dark and apricot coloured spherical forms of this mirabelle both as bullace versus my personal experience of local folk who used the term bullace only for the apricot coloured version while in Kent and Suffolk the dark but equally sweet variety was referred to as a cherry plum. Surely, such markedly different coloured fruit would be rewarded with different names by those folks intimate with their no doubt welcome contribution to their cuisine.

I have never come across a white version whereas any green forms when ripe are surely quince or green gages?