Prunus mume Seeds | Japanese Apricot
LATIN NAME: Prunus mume
COMMON NAME: Japanese Apricot, Chinese Plum, Ume
Plant Profile
The Japanese apricot is a small deciduous tree of five to eight metres with a rounded crown, dark bark and flowers that open in the coldest weeks of the year, before any leaf. The flowers are white or pink, single or double, and they carry a scent that is strongest on a still, cold morning.
It is not an apricot. Prunus mume is a separate species, closer to the plum group, and its fruit is too sour and too hard to eat raw. It has been cultivated in China for three thousand years and in Japan for fifteen hundred, and the fruit is pickled, salted and distilled rather than eaten fresh.
Science & Biotechnology
The fruit is a drupe with a stone that clings to the flesh, and it ripens in early summer, long after the flowers have gone. The acidity is high enough that the fresh fruit is inedible, and the pickling process relies on salt to draw out the juice and on a second fermentation with red shiso to give umeboshi its colour.
Flowering is triggered by a period of winter cold followed by warmth, and a mild winter can bring the whole tree into bloom in a fortnight. Most cultivars are partly self-incompatible, so a second variety improves the set, and the tree is grafted onto plum or apricot rootstock because cuttings root poorly.
The fruit is high in citric and malic acid and in pectin, which is why a boiled extract sets to a jelly without any added pectin, and why the brine in a pickling crock thickens as it stands.
Uses & Benefits
The unripe fruit is salted and dried for umeboshi, and the same fruit steeped in alcohol gives umeshu. The sour liquid left from pickling is sold as plum vinegar and used in dressings and in simmered dishes, and the flowers are salted and used to flavour tea.
In China the fruit is smoked over pine wood to make wu mei, which is used in decoction and in the sour plum drink sold in summer. The tree is grown as an ornamental for its winter flower, and the weeping and double forms are planted in temple gardens in both countries.
Growing from Seed
Sow the stone in autumn and leave the pot outdoors, since it needs cold to break dormancy. Germination is in spring, and the seedling takes six to eight years to flower, so buy a grafted plant if fruit is the point.
Plant in full sun in soil that drains, and prune in late winter after flowering, since the tree flowers on short spurs and hard cutting removes the wood that carries them. Thin the fruit in early summer to one per cluster, and net the tree in June if birds are a problem in your district.
Our Take
A tree for the flower in February and the pickle in July, and one that earns its place in a small garden. Buy it grafted, and plant two if you want fruit.
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