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Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Prunus mume

common name for Prunus mume

It’s a perennial controversy among friends who are docents in a local garden: what is the proper common name for Prunus mume? Is it Japanese apricot, or Japanese plum? Our interpretive materials go back and forth between the two over the years.

 

With common names, there are no definitive answers. Genetically, Prunus mume is closer to apricots, as this article in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (v.39, no. 3, September 2022) indicates: “P. mume is classified within subgenus Amygdalus alongside almonds and peaches and sits within section Armeniaca, being most closely related to P. armeniaca and P. sibirica (Yazbek & Oh, 2013).” (Those species of Prunus are both types of apricot.)

However, cultural context is also important. Although the plant originated in China, it was introduced in Japan in the sixth century C.E. Since the garden is focused on plants that are traditional to Japan, you should probably include both plum and apricot in your interpretive materials, as this Seattle Japanese Garden blog post does. Japanese new year decoration includes sho-chiku-bai, a trio of plants which are pine-bamboo-plum or apricot, depending on the English translation. (In China, this same trio of plants is referred to as the Three Friends of Winter because of their resilience during this season.) Which common name you give primacy will be a judgment call. In their book, Garden Plants of Japan, Ran Levy-Yamamori and Gerard Taaffe refer to the English name as follows: “Japanese apricot (sometimes confusingly referred to as Japanese plum).”

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Prunus species in the Seattle area

I would like to know how well the following trees will do in the Seattle area ?

(1)Prunus mume var. ‘Matsubara Red’

(2)Prunus ‘Kiku-shidare-zakura’

Both species you mention should do well in the Seattle area. Prunus ‘Kiku-shidare-zakura’ is described in Arthur Lee Jacobson’s Trees of Seattle (2006). Its other common name is ‘Cheal’s Weeping Cherry.’ The Japanese name means “weeping chrysanthemum cherry.” Its form is arching and weeping from the point where it has been top-grafted. According to Jacobson, the tree tends to be gawky and a bit sparse, but the flowers are very double. It is common in Seattle.

Prunus mume is also listed in Jacobson’s book. This tree and its cultivars (such as ‘Matsubara Red’) are less common in Seattle. You might be able to see examples in the Seattle Japanese Garden, the Kubota Garden, or Seattle Chinese Garden.

Because the common name of Prunus mume is Japanese apricot, there is sometimes confusion between Japanese flowering cherries and apricots. Prunus mume does produce fruit, but they are small and “bland to somewhat bitter,” and in Japanese cuisine they are preserved in salt and used as a condiment (Umeboshi plum). The more familiar fruiting apricot tree is actually Prunus armeniaca (and its cultivars).