Damson, Bullace or Sloe ID please

[Willb]

Hi,

This autumn I can across a hedgerow fruit tree which initially I thought was a blackthorn (sloe). I was picking to make some sloe gin. In the same area were two other fruit trees with similar fruits. However, one had thorns (blackthorn), and the other two didn't. The leaves on all three had slightly serrated edges.

I have done a pretty thorough search online to try and identify the difference between sloes, wild damsons and bullace, but almost everything I found either contradicted each other or was definitive. I decided to pick a sample of each, and include these images in this thread.

The first image is of all three together with a 50p coin to show size variations.



From left to right, the first had thorns (sloe?), the 2nd and 3rd had no thorns. In the example in the middle, the fruit was much bigger than any sloe I had ever seen and has an oval shape. The 3rd is sloe size, but no thorns.

The other images hopefully show greater details:

Prunus A01 (sloe?);



Prunus B01 (large oval fruit);



and C01 (same size as sloe, but no thorns):



Can anyone shed any light as to what each of these fruits are? I'm now thoroughly confused!

Many thanks ahead of time,

Will

[ladyhawk]

Bird cherry is simular which is poisinous by the way to us humans, but can't really tell from the pics

[ladyhawk]

Originally Posted by ladyhawk

Bird cherry is simular which is poisinous by the way to us humans, but can't really tell from the pics

OOPs spelling not good

[Dorts]

Will, I would suggest your three plants are:
A01 Prunus spinosa - (Blackthorn).
B01 Prunus domestica subsp. insititia (Bullace, Damson).
C01 Poss. Prunus x fruticans (P. spinosa x domestica).
You would normally find one or two thorns on the latter after a good search. If none then then you should suspect Prunus domestica, (Wild Plum) in one of its many forms.

There have been many other threads on this subject. Here's the most recent.
I'd like to know more about Bullace- what is it?

Dorts.