This old English plum has never been popular in America and is now
scarcely known on this continent. It is a large, handsome, purple plum,
as the illustration well shows, but seldom fit for dessert. “Seldom fit”
because it is quite variable in quality in some seasons and under some
conditions. It is an excellent culinary plum and its firm, thick, meaty
flesh fits it well for shipping. On the grounds of this Station the
trees behave very well in all respects and usually bear very full crops
of plums that would tempt purchasers in any market. It has all of the
characters usually ascribed to a money-maker variety of any fruit and why
not more grown in commercial orchards cannot be said.
Nothing is known of the origin of this plum except that it is English.
William Prince, in 1828, wrote: “This plum is of very large size, and has
attracted much notice in England; but it is only recently introduced to
this country, where it has not yet produced fruit that I am aware of.”
The Nectarine plum was confused with the Goliath in the early part of the
Nineteenth Century, but Robert Thompson,[215] the English horticulturist,
separated them so satisfactorily that they have ever since remained
distinct in plum literature. He found that this variety had pubescent
shoots and fruit-stalks, while the same parts of the Nectarine were
glabrous, and that the season of Goliath is considerably later. The
American Pomological Society placed Goliath on its fruit list in 1862,
but dropped it in 1871.
Tree large, vigorous, round-topped, dense, hardy, very
productive; branches stocky, with fruit-spurs numerous,
ash-gray, smooth except for the large, raised lenticels;
branchlets somewhat thick, short, with internodes of medium
length, green changing to dull brownish-drab, heavily pubescent
throughout the season, with few, inconspicuous, small
lenticels; leaf-buds of average size and length, conical, free.
Leaves somewhat flattened, obovate, two inches wide, three and
five-eighths inches long; upper surface dark green, nearly
glabrous, with a grooved midrib; lower surface heavily
pubescent; apex obtuse or acute, base acute, margin finely
serrate, eglandular or with few, small dark glands; petiole
one-half inch long, thick, heavily pubescent, with a faint red
tinge, glandless or with from one to three large, globose,
greenish-yellow glands usually at the base of the leaf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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