Mystery shrubs

Four or five years ago, I went shopping for a couple of shrubs that would grow to compact dimensions, but provide a bit of a privacy screen from the street. I also wanted something that would happily grow in sand. I visited a local nursery famed for its knowledge of landscaping materials.

The woman on duty, at the time, showed me a couple of large pots of shrubby things and she said they were Sand Cherries. One would guess by the name that they’d do well growing in sand. I bought them and planted them.

Now, I have two large and unruly shrubs that need to meet the hedge clippers in a serious way. But that’s not the story. I’m happy that they are growing so well. They are about the only things on my property that are growing so well.

This is the first year that they’ve produced volumes of fruit. Maybe it’s the lack of water. They act as if this is their last chance to preserve their place for posterity. The branches are so laden with fruit that many of them are almost bent to the ground. And that’s a happy development, too. The birds are beside themselves with joy. Especially the cardinals. They have already stripped one of the shrubs clean. There’s been a daily party out there for the last two weeks. The fruit on the other bush gets just enough less sunlight in a day that the fruit is about a week behind. They are just now turning ripe.

This is a detail of the bush:

larger drop down image

Over the last week, I’ve had two long time natives of the area exclaim over these bushes saying, “Oh, your beach plums are beautiful!”

And I said, “Well, they’re supposed to be sand cherries.”

The response was, “Um, I don’t really think so.”

I find this amusing because the place where I bought these shrubs is called Beach Plum, Too.

I’ve looked on the web many times for information about sand cherries and what little I can find suggests that the sand cherries that grow in this neck of the woods are supposed to have purple leaves and they don’t grow as tall.

But, to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know what a beach plum looked like if I fell over it. Though, if you look at the beach plum photograph on Wikipedia there is a striking resemblance to the photograph above. Also, a photograph from Cornell. The bark on the latter photo looks exactly like my shrubs.

I wouldn’t mind at all if these shrubs turned out to be Beach Plums. Their fruit is edible (so are sand cherries). I’ve tasted a couple of them and, though tart, they are also sweet at the same time. Sand cherries are supposed to be so tart and sour that they turn your mouth inside out. I can’t say that these have a particularly distinctive flavor, but they would definitely make a fine preserve—if I could harvest enough before the birds cleaned them out. I don’t think that’s in the cards for this year. I’ll plan for making some preserves next year or whenever the harvest is bountiful again.

I’m definitely leaning toward believing that these are Beach Plums. Beach plums are native to the area and if that’s what these are, I’d be very happy about it.