I'd like to know more about Bullace- what is it?

[odonata]

Does anyone know anything about Bullace? I was on a farm visit a month ago in south shropshire and was given one to eat. As far as I could tell it was a perfectly round plum. I know nothing more. What is it? Where does it grow and how common is it? I'm intruiged!

[Tiggrx]

The Bullace (Prunus domestica var. insititia) is a wild form of the Plum.

In Britain they are probably not native but are fairly widespread in hedgerows as relicts of former cultivation.

They are generally rather sour and better suited for cooking than eating fresh. You can occasionally obtain a few varieties from fruit tree suppliers the commonest being the Shepherd's Bullace which has white fruit while the Black Bullace is dark purple.

Originally Posted by odonata

Does anyone know anything about Bullace? I was on a farm visit a month ago in south shropshire and was given one to eat. As far as I could tell it was a perfectly round plum. I know nothing more. What is it? Where does it grow and how common is it? I'm intruiged!

[nightshade]

I have a couple of trees near me the fruit ripens progressively so that there are at least
three colours on each tree at anyone time the purple bullaces are so sweet and fragrant
I must remember to collect some fruit to grow my own

[fbcpmike]

Originally Posted by nightshade

I have a couple of trees near me the fruit ripens progressively so that there are at least three colours on each tree at anyone time the purple bullaces are so sweet and fragrant. I must remember to collect some fruit to grow my own

At the risk of promoting our own website, we have a bullace description and pictures - here. We have both Bullace and Damson within a few meters of each other, but the Damson page is not written up yet.

Bullace is roundly oval in shape, light green, with a bloom, and a "crease" down one side. It ripens late in the year, later than Damson, and makes a good jam. They are best picked as they are just going soft, leave them longer and they begin to rot going a dark purple with a mould growth. We do not find the Bullace changes colour as it ripens, it just gets softer. Once they are purple they are rotten. You may have a sub species or a cross.

Damson is rounder, dark purple to start with, but with a light coloured flesh, again make a good jam.

We use both the Bullace and the Damson along with Blackberry, Rowan and Crab Apple to make various jams and jellies as fundraisers for the group, 70lbs this year and weve still 20lbs of blackberries in the freezer !.

[TonyW]

It's a while since the posts about bullace but I've just come across them and would like to comment.

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about bullace and damson, what the differences are and whether there really are differences. When we lived near the Chilterns in both Bucks and Oxfordshire there were many trees I understood were bullace. They grow to at least 20 feet and the fruits are dark purple, oval in shape and up to an inch long. There are others which are very similar but the fruits are rounder. I call these the "Bledlow Bullace" because that's where I first saw them, but I've subsequently found them elsewhere in the district. The two types may be found close to each other.

On the hills above Chinnor there is one large tree with slightly larger round fruit ("The Giant Bullace of Chinnor Hill" to our family), while at Longwick near Princes Risborough is a group of trees with a version of the oval fruit that's smaller than usual. There's another of these trees near Bledlow.

Living now in North Hampshire I've so far found only one group of bullace trees, these having the smaller oval fruit.

The fruits I believe are bullace ripen by late September. They are somewhat sharp in taste but are basically eatable - not bitter as sloes are. They become riper and sweeter if left for another two or three weeks but equinoctial gales may cause most of them to fall.

If you look at various sources you will find conflicting information - some will say that bullace is round and damson is oval, and others the other way round. In some cases a clinging stone is said to be a feature of bullace while damson is semi-clinging or free; others tell you that both have a clinging stone. The Keepers Nursery website which has much interesting information describes the Langley Bullace as "best regarded as a small damson". This presupposes that there is a definite distinction, but the result of consulting several sources is confusion rather than distinction.

I think the probability is that there's a spectrum of varieties of these trees, all different from sloes in having larger sweeter fruit, larger leaves, probably fewer thorns, and reaching a greater height. But I'm not entirely confident about that statement, having come across trees which apparently are intermediate between blackthorn and bullace - taller, larger leaves, few thorns, but the fruit tasted similar to sloes. There may be, or have been in the past, distinctive differences between the bullaces around one village and those around another.

To complicate things still further, there are bullaces with green or whitish fruit, as fbpcmike explains above and as on the Keepers Nursery website. Interestingly, the fruit in fbpcmike's pictures looks very like that on trees along the embankment of the former railway (now the Phoenix Trail) near Thame. I've always considered the bullace to be the smaller purple fruit I've referred to above. It proved easy to get the green fruit from the railway bank to produce a new tree and we have one in our garden, but I've rarely been able to get the purple bullace to grow from a stone and the tree of that type that we have was grown from a cutting.

Odonata who started this thread said he/she was intrigued, and I may have made the situation even more intriguing. And the fruit eaten on a Shropshire farm might actually have been a variety called the Shropshire Prune.

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by TonyW

It's a while since the posts about bullace but I've just come across them and would like to comment.

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about bullace and damson, what the differences are and whether there really are differences. When we lived near the Chilterns in both Bucks and Oxfordshire there were many trees I understood were bullace. They grow to at least 20 feet and the fruits are dark purple, oval in shape and up to an inch long. There are others which are very similar but the fruits are rounder. I call these the "Bledlow Bullace" because that's where I first saw them, but I've subsequently found them elsewhere in the district. The two types may be found close to each other.

On the hills above Chinnor there is one large tree with slightly larger round fruit ("The Giant Bullace of Chinnor Hill" to our family), while at Longwick near Princes Risborough is a group of trees with a version of the oval fruit that's smaller than usual. There's another of these trees near Bledlow.

Living now in North Hampshire I've so far found only one group of bullace trees, these having the smaller oval fruit.

The fruits I believe are bullace ripen by late September. They are somewhat sharp in taste but are basically eatable - not bitter as sloes are. They become riper and sweeter if left for another two or three weeks but equinoctial gales may cause most of them to fall.

If you look at various sources you will find conflicting information - some will say that bullace is round and damson is oval, and others the other way round. In some cases a clinging stone is said to be a feature of bullace while damson is semi-clinging or free; others tell you that both have a clinging stone. The Keepers Nursery website which has much interesting information describes the Langley Bullace as "best regarded as a small damson". This presupposes that there is a definite distinction, but the result of consulting several sources is confusion rather than distinction.

I think the probability is that there's a spectrum of varieties of these trees, all different from sloes in having larger sweeter fruit, larger leaves, probably fewer thorns, and reaching a greater height. But I'm not entirely confident about that statement, having come across trees which apparently are intermediate between blackthorn and bullace - taller, larger leaves, few thorns, but the fruit tasted similar to sloes. There may be, or have been in the past, distinctive differences between the bullaces around one village and those around another.

To complicate things still further, there are bullaces with green or whitish fruit, as fbpcmike explains above and as on the Keepers Nursery website. Interestingly, the fruit in fbpcmike's pictures looks very like that on trees along the embankment of the former railway (now the Phoenix Trail) near Thame. I've always considered the bullace to be the smaller purple fruit I've referred to above. It proved easy to get the green fruit from the railway bank to produce a new tree and we have one in our garden, but I've rarely been able to get the purple bullace to grow from a stone and the tree of that type that we have was grown from a cutting.

Odonata who started this thread said he/she was intrigued, and I may have made the situation even more intriguing. And the fruit eaten on a Shropshire farm might actually have been a variety called the Shropshire Prune.

The problem with the name bullace is that it is ancient and is unlikely to have ever had a species or cultivar specific meaning on a broad geographical scale. So while in given regions and locallities bullace may be attached to a particular form of fruit, historically it was probably used to describe all forms of plum.

CM

[Maidup]

I have a tree which I used to call Blackthorn since it blossoms at that time of year. But a couple of years ago when I noticed the fruit and I now call it Bullace.

But the fruit are ripe now (July).
The fruit are round and go from green/yellow, through yellow and to red once ripe. They are beautifully sweet and very similar in taste to a plum.

Could this still be a local Bullace or do you think its something else?

Luv Maid

[Tiggrx]

Sounds more like Cherry-plum (Prunus cerasifera). Bullaces have purple (or sometimes white) fruit.

Originally Posted by Maidup

I have a tree which I used to call Blackthorn since it blossoms at that time of year. But a couple of years ago when I noticed the fruit and I now call it Bullace.

But the fruit are ripe now (July).
The fruit are round and go from green/yellow, through yellow and to red once ripe. They are beautifully sweet and very similar in taste to a plum.

Could this still be a local Bullace or do you think its something else?

Luv Maid

[Turloch]

We have a range of prunus trees that were established in the Green Valley when we acquired the site in 1987 all originating before the land was abandoned in the late 19th century, totaling over 50 trees. There are 4 distinct types, all black, ranging from Damsons, ready this year in mid august, to plums and bullace ripe late august and spherical Micklemass plums [as they are known locally] which are not yet ready [ripening dates this year are very unusuall.] There is a clear taste distinction between the groups The bullace in the green valley are quite small and elongated, about 20% of the mass of the damsons but very different in shape from sloes. I have also been picking Langley Bullace from another of our farms today and these are far nearer to the size of a Damson. We consider that bullace forms a full continuum from Damson to Sloe [and there are also white bullace growing wild on the limestone hills a few hundred yards away]. The key distinguishing feature is not colour, size or shape but taste. Bullace has an element of the dryness of a sloe but not sufficient to make it unpaletable.

Bullace self propogates by sucker and pulling up and planting inconvenient suckers we have planted entire hedges. They are then slow to fruit taking often 10 years to produce. I have also seen bullace wild in hedgerows near Twyning near tewkesbury and believe they very widespread but often unnoticed

[naturelover]

Originally Posted by Turloch

We have a range of prunus trees that were established in the Green Valley when we acquired the site in 1987 all originating before the land was abandoned in the late 19th century, totaling over 50 trees. There are 4 distinct types, all black, ranging from Damsons, ready this year in mid august, to plums and bullace ripe late august and spherical Micklemass plums [as they are known locally] which are not yet ready [ripening dates this year are very unusuall.] There is a clear taste distinction between the groups The bullace in the green valley are quite small and elongated, about 20% of the mass of the damsons but very different in shape from sloes. I have also been picking Langley Bullace from another of our farms today and these are far nearer to the size of a Damson. We consider that bullace forms a full continuum from Damson to Sloe [and there are also white bullace growing wild on the limestone hills a few hundred yards away]. The key distinguishing feature is not colour, size or shape but taste. Bullace has an element of the dryness of a sloe but not sufficient to make it unpaletable.

Bullace self propogates by sucker and pulling up and planting inconvenient suckers we have planted entire hedges. They are then slow to fruit taking often 10 years to produce. I have also seen bullace wild in hedgerows near Twyning near tewkesbury and believe they very widespread but often unnoticed

hiya i havnt herd the word bullace since i was a kid,we all yoused to go wild fruit picking about this time of year,picking blackberrys,sloes,elderberry,and of course bullace,my dad would break his neck to reach the bullace,he made wine and jam from the fruit,those were the days.

[alexheys]

This doesn't really add anything to the technical discussion about bullace but my next door neighbour hs two trees, one of which is clearly bullace based on these descriptions: greeny yellow round fruit that ripen to red and are a little too sour to eat uncooked. But he's also got another tree next to it that has red leaves and purple fruit which are very nice. The reason I mention it is because he calls them sugar plums which, while not strictly accurate, judging by anything else I could find on the internet, is certainly a more poetic name than the ungainly bullace. And, by the way, it's early August in Ipswich and both trees are absolutely laden with fruit after nothing last year.

[Meta menardi]

Originally Posted by alexheys

sugar plums which, while not strictly accurate, judging by anything else I could find on the internet, is certainly a more poetic name than the ungainly bullace.

I like Bullace as a name, it seems basic down to earth as a name. Sugar plums? Sounds a bit Burl Ives to me.

[trilbyhat]

Hi folks,
Although a new guy to this site, I've been using Bullaces and Sloes for winemaking gathered here in the W. Midlands over many years. Often I plant the stones (pits) and now have a few bushes in my own garden. Up till last Autumn I had never seen or heard of a "cherry plum" when I discovered a small grove of them fruiting heavilly near the River Tame. Your posts above told me what they were. I made excellent jam from them and a gallon of wine (yet to be tried).
Two puzzles arise:
1. One of my own seedlings which had not previously fruited also produced a few Cherry Plums. It can only have grown from a Bullace or Sloe stone.
2. This year the same tree has flowered profusely and some tiny fruitlets are already showing but among them are some which are very pale green and elongated rather in the form of a tiny Chile Pepper. I never spray so am wondering if this will be a mutation or a viral infection.

[Dorts]

My Mother-in-law (bless her) swore that Bullaces made by far the best 'Country Wine' and made gallons of it every year.
I remember it being quite strong but not ver flavoursome!

The Bullace is a 'Wild Plum', a term which covers a range of small trees and shrubs under the title Prunus domestica. These include Plums, Damsons, Greengages and Bullaces.

Two forms have been given the sub-specific names of institia and italica. But the whole group is so interbred that it is almost impossible to name individual shrubs.
Dorts.

[trilbyhat]

Thanks Dorts, I'll look up those sub-species. The tendency to interbreed will explain the arrival of my own Cherryplum. I have Plums,Damsons and Sloes close by so will be propagating the next stones with interest. The bush in question has taken about six years from sowing to fruiting and is more vigorous than the blackthorns which came from the same sowing. None of the seedlings have produced Bullaces as yet. My bullace wine seems to take longer to clear and the flavour is odd, but after a few glasses one hardly notices !

[Dorts]

Originally Posted by trilbyhat

Thanks Dorts, I'll look up those sub-species. The tendency to interbreed will explain the arrival of my own Cherryplum. I have Plums,Damsons and Sloes close by so will be propagating the next stones with interest. The bush in question has taken about six years from sowing to fruiting and is more vigorous than the blackthorns which came from the same sowing. None of the seedlings have produced Bullaces as yet. My bullace wine seems to take longer to clear and the flavour is odd, but after a few glasses one hardly notices !

Just to add even more 'confusion' to the 'Wild Plum' complex; Cherry Plum - Prunus cerasifera, and Sloe (Blackthorn), Prunus spinosa, should not be included with the Wild Plums, as they are considered to be distinct species and not part of that 'complex'.
Sorry.
Dorts.

[STYRBJORN]

OCED:-
bullace n a thorny shrub with small purple-black fruits, of which the damson is a cultivated form. [Prunus institia].
origin ME from OFr buloce 'sloe' of unknown origin.

Chambers also describes it as "closely related to the sloe".

[Dorts]

Originally Posted by STYRBJORN

OCED:-
bullace n a thorny shrub with small purple-black fruits, ............

My Mother-in-laws Bullaces, (mentioned earlier) were always green!
The old country folk always/not always, got it right!
Dorts.

[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?

[trilbyhat]

It may help to clear any doubt about the name "cherry plum" if I quote page 84 of "The Field Guide To The Trees And Shrubs Of Gt. Britain" (1981) which confirms Dorts identification as [i]prunus cerasifera[i].
Re. my April post: the Chille Pepper shaped fruits all turned pale yellow and fell in May. Disection revealed no visible wildlife inside. The few Cherry Plums which the birds have left me with are now the same size and shape as my regular cherrys although still green. The mystery as to how it grew from a sloe or bullace stone remains.

[nightshade]

Originally Posted by trilbyhat

Hi folks,
Although a new guy to this site, I've been using Bullaces and Sloes for winemaking gathered here in the W. Midlands over many years. Often I plant the stones (pits) and now have a few bushes in my own garden. Up till last Autumn I had never seen or heard of a "cherry plum" when I discovered a small grove of them fruiting heavilly near the River Tame. Your posts above told me what they were. I made excellent jam from them and a gallon of wine (yet to be tried).
Two puzzles arise:
1. One of my own seedlings which had not previously fruited also produced a few Cherry Plums. It can only have grown from a Bullace or Sloe stone.
2. This year the same tree has flowered profusely and some tiny fruitlets are already showing but among them are some which are very pale green and elongated rather in the form of a tiny Chile Pepper. I never spray so am wondering if this will be a mutation or a viral infection.

I am glad I re-read these posts, I found what I initially thought were galls on a bullace/cherry plum tree, now I know that they were a fruiting body,huzzah!
Locally there were Sloes, Damsons, Greengages and two types of this Plum Cherry one of which may be a Bullace. The problem is with so much 'infill' building these old garden orchards are being ripped out.

[daddy2coull]

I signed up to this forum purely for this subject. I live just south of Great Yarmouth and from an early age have always known Bullaces to start off green and ripen to either yellow or purple. The yellow always seems to ripen and drop shortly before the purple and the trees are always found together in hedgerows and alongside long abandoned

My late Grandmother used to make some lovely jam from these and she spoke of having them back in her native Holland during the German occupation. It's such a shame I cannot remember if she had a Dutch name for them or if she used Bullace too.

Lovely reading about them and hearing peoples stories from days gone by. Locally I now know of nobody else that has even heard of these plentiful fruit (all the more for me though)

Adam

[daddy2coull]

Originally Posted by alexheys

This doesn't really add anything to the technical discussion about bullace but my next door neighbour hs two trees, one of which is clearly bullace based on these descriptions: greeny yellow round fruit that ripen to red and are a little too sour to eat uncooked. But he's also got another tree next to it that has red leaves and purple fruit which are very nice. The reason I mention it is because he calls them sugar plums which, while not strictly accurate, judging by anything else I could find on the internet, is certainly a more poetic name than the ungainly bullace. And, by the way, it's early August in Ipswich and both trees are absolutely laden with fruit after nothing last year.

Reading back through this thread, If i remember correctly, the trees near our house only gave a full crop for jam making every other year. No idea if there was any reason for this. It was nearly 25 years since I'd given the trees any thought so my memories could well be wrong.

But now I have a new found interest in the trees and a lovely trip down memory lane.

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by daddy2coull

Reading back through this thread, If i remember correctly, the trees near our house only gave a full crop for jam making every other year. No idea if there was any reason for this. It was nearly 25 years since I'd given the trees any thought so my memories could well be wrong.

But now I have a new found interest in the trees and a lovely trip down memory lane.

Biennial fruiting is often seen in older trees of various species - including plums and apples. Extensive pruning can re-start annual production, and top feeding can help as well but the effects of age are hard to reverse permanently

CM

[Mekali]

I live in Sussex and have always called bullaces the small plum like fruits I find in the hedgerows that are larger than sloes, but smaller than damsons. I use them to make Bullace Gin using the same recipe as Sloe Gin. I picked about a pound and a half near East Dean in East Suusex on Sunday and since I've now run out of Gin for Bullace Gin thanks to ideas on this thread I think I'll make the rest into jam using a damson jam recipe. Yum