Mature plum fruit may have a dusty-white coating that gives them a glaucous appearance; this is easily rubbed off. This is an epicuticular wax coating and is known as "wax bloom". Dried plum fruits are called dried plums or prunes, although prunes are a distinct type of plum, and may have antedated the fruits now commonly known as plums.
Dried plums (or prunes) are also sweet and juicy and contain several antioxidants. Plums and prunes are known for their laxative effect. This effect has been attributed to various compounds present in the fruits, such as dietary fiber, sorbitol, and isatin. Prunes and prune juice are often used to help regulate the functioning of the digestive system. Dried prune marketers in the United States have, in recent years, begun marketing their product as "dried plums". This is due to "prune" having negative connotations connected with elderly people suffering from constipation.
Dried, salted plums are used as a snack, sometimes known as saladito or salao. Various flavors of dried plum are available at Chinese grocers and specialty stores worldwide. They tend to be much drier than the standard prune. Cream, ginsing, spicy, and salty are among the common varieties. Licorice is generally used to intensify the flavor of these plums and is used to make salty plum drinks and toppings for shaved ice or baobing.
Pickled plums are another type of preserve available in Asia and international specialty stores. The Japanese variety, called umeboshi, is often used for rice balls, called onigiri or omusubi. The ume, from which umeboshi are made, is more closely related, however, to the apricot than to the plum.
As with many other members of the rose family, plum seeds contain cyanogenic glycosides, including amygdalin. These substances are capable of decomposing into a sugar molecule and hydrogen cyanide gas. While plum seeds are not the most toxic within the rose family (that dubious honor going to the bitter almond), large doses of these chemicals from any source are hazardous to human health.
Prune kernel oil is made from the fleshy inner part of the pit of the plum.
Plums come in a wide variety of colors and sizes. Some are much firmer-fleshed than others, and some have yellow, white, green or red flesh, with equally varying skin color.
Plum cultivars in use today include:
When it flowers in the early spring, a plum tree will be covered in blossoms, and in a good year approximately 50% of the flowers will be pollinated and become plums. Flowering starts after 80 growing degree days.
If the weather is too dry, the plums will not develop past a certain stage, but will fall from the tree while still tiny, green buds, and if it is unseasonably wet or if the plums are not harvested as soon as they are ripe, the fruit may develop a fungal condition called brown rot. Brown rot is not toxic, and very small affected areas can be cut out of the fruit, but unless the rot is caught immediately, the fruit will no longer be edible. Plum is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera, including November moth, willow beauty and short-cloaked moth.
The Serbian plum (Serbian: шљива / šljiva) is the third most produced in the world and the alcoholic drink slivovitz (plum brandy) (Serbian: шљивовица / šljivovica) is the national drink of Serbia. The plum production averages 424,300 tons per year; FAO 1991–2001.
A large number of plums, of the Damson variety, are also grown in Hungary, where they are called szilva and are used to make lekvar (a plum paste jam), palinka (a slivovitz-type liquor), plum dumplings, and other foods. The region of Szabolcs-Szatmár, in the northeastern part of the country near the borders with Ukraine and Romania, is a major producer of plums.
The plum blossom or meihua (), along with the peony, are considered traditional floral emblems of China.
The plum is commonly used in China, Yunnan area, to produce a local plum wine with a smooth, sweet, fruity taste and approximately 12% alcohol by volume.
colspan=3 | Top ten plum producers in 2009 | |
! Country | ! Production (tons) | ! Note |
5,373,001 | [E] | |
662,631 | ||
561,366 | ||
533,691 | ||
245,782 | ||
200,100 | ||
194,100 | ||
155,767 | ||
150,000 | ||
136,700 | ||
World | 10,679,206 | |
==References==
Category:Plant subgenera Category:Flora of Armenia Category:Medicinal plants
ar:خوخ de:Pflaume es:Ciruela eu:Okaran fr:Prune (fruit) hi:आलू बुख़ारा io:Pruno nah:Ciruela pt:Ameixeira vi:Phân chi Mận mơThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.