Blackthorn

[henrya]

I'm not quite sure where to post this! Fungi? Wild Flowers and Plants? I plumped for Trees.

During my lunch-time walk today I noticed some splendid examples of 'pocket plum' affecting the developing sloes on the Blackthorn. This is caused by a fungal infection (Taphrina pruni) that causes the sloe to swell, elongate and turn yellowish. rather as if the Blackthorn was bearing some miniature bananas! I'll try and get a photograph in the next few days to post.

Some years are worse than others for this infection, and apparently it can affect other species of plum, though I've only seen it on Blackthorn.

henrya

[StuartDH]

Not sure if I've seen this before...and I tend to spend a lot of time around Blackthorn bushes - picking masses of Sloes in September/October to make plenty of gin for Christmas

[henrya]

If I can manage it, here (attached, I hope) are a couple of photographs of 'pocket plums'. One shows infected Sloes with one uninfected one. The infected ones in this shot are quite yellow, though not as yellow as I recall them being last Friday. The other shot shows that some have gone an unpleasant brownish colour - whether this is the fungus itself, or a secondary mould, I'm not sure.

Quite a lot of the Sloes in this hedge are infected - Sloe Gin makers will have a hard time this year. The infection rate in my garden is much lower, though a lot of the leaves there are heavily galled by the mite Eriophyes similis.

henrya