A New Beach Plum Book for Children, in progress

I’m still here in beach plum land indulging my passion for this small fruit of a native seaside woody shrub found from Maryland to Maine and known for its spectacular jelly.

The Beach Plum Guard

II’ve completed the text for a children’s picture book called The Beach Plum Guard, which depicts the ongoing tradition of families who gather wild beach plums at the seashore. In this story a sister and brother, while searching for beach plums in their seaside neighborhood on Cape Cod, encounter a man watching over some ripening beach plums. After a brief encounter, they interpret his actions as menacing but subsequently learn from a neighbor the reason why he guards these plums. With the help of the neighbor the children and their mother are introduced to the elderly man. He then gives them permission to pick the beach plums if they will make some jelly for him.

The manuscript includes recipes for beach plum jelly and syrup, a brief guide to help readers find beach plums and some fun facts about this plant.

Beach Plum Jelly, cooling 

A Good Season for Beach Plums

Don't ask me why it was a good season on Cape Cod. I don't know, except that the weather was good during the month of May when the shrubs flowered. As a result there was a good fruit set. This year there was lower than average rainfall again. Ripening began in the second week of August. OK. Now I've provided an adequate summary for those who follow the annual fruit production of these native plants and have started making beach plum jelly or jam.

Beach Plum recipes

But for those of you who have not yet been bitten by the beach plum bug, I offer the following tidbits:

Beach plum - 

its scientific name is Prunus maritima

is a stone fruit like peach and cherry
fruit is small, about 3/4 inch in diameter

range from coastal Delaware to Maine

can grow as a low bush, tall shrub or a tree form

has a long life span, greater than 50 years

grows on lee-side of sand dunes as well as inland

has showy white flowers, in May

mature fruits can be purple, red or yellow, on different plants

AVOID CONFUSION - too often the introduced, asian rugosa rose is confused with the native beach plum. Compare the flowers and fruits of these two species which can be found growing together. Big differences! But beware: in some locales people call rugosa rose-- beach plum.

Beach Plum flowers

Rugosa rose flower

Beach Plum ripe fruit

Rugosa rose fruit ( a hip)