Flava Island Beach Plum Seeds and Scions

Yellow is Mellow Beach Plum Seeds and Scions

This seedling group came to me from a collector who harvested from bushes on an island where there was a great diversity of colors and types. We grew out many of the plants and kept one group separate from the others. One of them was yellow fruited. The flavor is very mild and sweet. Since then I found many yellow fruited types but in general it is not common and difficult to find in the wild. The reason for this is unclear but since I started my plantings, I was able to produce many yellow types quickly rather than the one in a hundred shot. How? The petioles of the leaves are also yellow. Flava Island cultivar is selected for its nice stand of yellow fruits as well as a means to clonally propagate this high yielding clean fruited very sweet beach plum. 

Flava Island like other seedlings in this particular island group produce a very unusual stolon type growth which skips along the ground and roots if covered by soil. I have never seen this before on beach plums under cultivation. It is a good characteristic in cloning and setting out new plants. 

Flava Island has very good quality fruit with heavy fruiting. This seed source contains only yellow fruited plants and is not mixed with other colors.

"Flava Island" Beach Plum A selected seedling grown from seed collected on an island off the eastern coast of the U.S. This yellow selection has the most production of any of the yellows I have found plus the plant itself is much longer lived than the others. This variety is now over 20 years old and going strong. The fruit is a clean yellow unless there is a lot of rain or high humidity during ripening in the end of August. This can cause a soot looking coloration which does not damage fruit quality.  "Flava Island" is a heavy bearer and produces spur type fruiting in solid clusters. Giving these clusters adequate sunlight and air will improve the quality of the fruit. Scion wood is available with the purchase of seeds. Flava Island has a mild sweet flavor and this characteristic makes it better for eating fresh off the bush. 

To germinate the seed:  Seed was clean and stored dried but not overly dried so just add some semi moist peat moss and store for one week at room temperature then refrigerate at 38 to 40F for 60-120 days. Some sprouting may occur after 90 days or so. You can pluck those out and plant right away. Plant at a depth where the cotyledons are just even with the soil surface. Make sure not to bury the seed to prevent rotting. Seeds of beach plum are like an acorn with a root going down first prior to the top showing up. Careful about damp off. I use sand to cover the seed lightly. Once in a while a small portion of the seeds will require a second dormancy so do not throw out the seeds thinking they are blanks.