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Delicious Summer Stone Fruit Hybrid
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Trander's Joe market and saw boxes of Green Plumcots and Cherry Plum. What are these delicious fruits that only comes around summer time? I found out that these fruits are stone fruit hybrids called pluots, aprium, plumcots, & apriplum. So, what are Pluots, aprium, plumcots, & apriplum?
Plum --> Pluots --> Plumcots (Apriplum) --> Aprium --> Apricot
Plumcots (Apriplum)
50% plum, 50% apricot
Plumcots or apriplum is the result of a simple hybrid of plum and apricot. Bred by Luther Burbank way back at the early 19th century, they are half plum and half apricot. Plumcots and apriplum are differ by hybridization method but contain similar proportion of plum and apricot, 50 : 50. It has a wide variety of skin color. One of the sweetest variety actually has a green skin. It has a natural wax coating to it, which is safe to consume. Look for a firm one with a fresh and sweet aroma that is available between May and October in the year.
Pluots
75% plum, 25% apricot
Flyod Zeiger, further mix bred plumcots and Plum to add more characteristic into the friut and call it pluots. Pluots has a more dominant plum characteristics to apricot. Similar to plumcots, It has a wide variety of skin color and might have a green skin. It has a natural 'wax' coating on it. It can be found between May and October.
Aprium
25% plum, 75% apricot
Flyod Zeiger also created aprium, which has a more dominant apricot characteristics to plum. Aprium are picked when fully mature on the tree. The skin will always has a greenish color although the inside is orange ripe. Red color on the skin is only an indicator that one side is more exposed to the sun light. It is harvested between mid-May and August period.
The naming for these stone fruit hybrids became more complicated due to the patent system. New hybrids found by other than Zeiger Genetics have to have a new category and name. Despite the specific biological definition each variety, it is not uncommon that you would find a plumcots marked as plum or pluots and vice versa in a grocery store. It is just too hard to keep up to the true scientific name of the massive number of unique breed. As these stone fruit hybrid become popular, many people generalize them as pluots, similar to how people uses the word 'Clorox' to refer to home cleaning liquid and 'Google' to refer to a search engine.
These fruits contain no fat, sodum, and cholestrol, and is a great source of vitamin C. They are extremely delicious. If you have never had them, go and catch them before the end of the season this year!
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