Gerard's Herbal Vol. 5
The Kinds.
To write of Plums particularly would require a peculiar volume, and yet the end not to be attained unto, nor the stock or kindred perfectly known, neither to be distinguished apart: the number of the sorts or kinds are not known to any one country: every climate hath his own fruit, far different from that of other countries: myself have three score sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare: there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly cometh to our hands others not before known, therefore a few figures shall serve for the rest. Let such as require a larger history of these varieties have recourse to the oft mentioned work of Mr Parkinson: and such as desire the things themselves may find most of the best with Mr John Millen in Old Street.
Fig. 2093. Kinds of Plum Tree (1-3, 5)
The Description.
1. The Plum or Damson tree is of a mean bigness: it is covered with a smooth bark: the branches are long, whereon do grow broad leaves, more long than round, nicked in the edges: the flowers are white: the plums do differ in colour, fashion, and bigness, they all consist of pulp and skin, and also of kernel, which is shut up in a shell or stone. Some plums are of a blackish blue, of which some be longer, others rounder, others of the colour of yellow wax, divers of a crimson red, greater for the most part than the rest. There be also green plums, and withal very long, of a sweet and pleasant taste: moreover, the pulp or meat of some is drier, and easilier separated from the stone: of other some it is moister, and cleaveth faster: our common Damson is known to all, and therefore not to be stood upon.
2. The Mirobalan Plum tree groweth to the height of a great tree, charged with many great arms or boughs, which divide themselves into small twiggy branches, by means whereof it yieldeth a goodly and pleasant shadow: the trunk or body is covered with a finer and thinner bark than any of the other Plum trees: the leaves do somewhat resemble those of the Cherry tree, they are very tender, indented about the edges: the flowers be white: the fruit is round, hanging upon long footstalks pleasant to behold, green in the beginning, red when it is almost ripe, and being full ripe it glistereth like purple mixed with black: the flesh or meat is full of juice pleasant in taste: the stone is small, or of a mean bigness: the tree bringeth forth plenty of fruit every other year.
3. The Almond Plum groweth up to the height of a tree of a mean bigness: the branches are long, smooth, and even: the leaves are broad, somthing long, and ribbed in divers places, with small nerves running through the same: the flowers are white, sprinkled with a little dash of purple scarcely to be perceived: the fruit is long, having a cleft down the middle, of a brown red colour, and of a pleasant taste.
4. The Damascene Plum tree groweth likewise to a mean height, the branches very brittle; the leaves of a deep green colour: the fruit is round, of a bluish black colour: the stone is like unto that of the Cherry, wherein it differeth from all other Plums.
5. The Bullace and the Sloe tree are wild kinds of Plums, which do vary in their kind, even as the greater and manured Plums do. Of the Bullace, some are greater and of better taste than others. Sloes are some of one taste, and some of others, more sharp; some greater, and others lesser; the which to distinguish with long descriptions were to small purpose, considering they be all and every of them known even unto the simplest: therefore this shall suffice for their several descriptions.
The Place.
The Plum trees grow in all known countries of the world: they require a loose ground, they also receive a difference from the regions where they grow, not only of the form or fashion, but especially of the faculties, as we will forthwith declare.
The Plum trees are also many times grafted into trees of other kinds, and being so ingrafted, they faciem parentis, succum adoptionis, ut Plinius dicit, exhibent.["As Pliny says, they exhibit the appearence of the parent, and the juiciness of the child"]
The greatest variety of these rare Plums are to be found in the grounds of Mr Vincent Pointer of Twickenham, before remembered in the chapter Of Apples: although myself am not without some, and those rare and delicate.
The wild Plums grow in most hedges through England.
The Time.
The common and garden Plum trees do bloom in April: the leaves come forth presently with them: the fruit is ripe in summer, some sooner, some later.
The Names.
The Plum tree is called in Latin, Prunus: in High Dutch, Pflaumenbaum: in Low Dutch, Pruymen: in Spanish, Ciruelo: in French, Prunier: in English, Plum tree.
The fruit is called in Latin, Prunum: in High Dutch, Pflaumen: in Low Dutch, Pruymen: in Italian and French, Prune: in Spanish, Prunas: in English, prune, and plum. These have also names from the regions and countries where they grow.
The old writers have called those that grow in Syria near unto Damascus, Damascena Pruna: in English, Damsons, or Damask Prunes: and those that grow in Spain, Hispanica, Spanish Prunes or Plums. So in our age we use to call those that grow in Hungary, Hungarica, or Pannonica, Plums of Hungary: some, gallica Pruna, or French Prunes, of the country of France. Clearcus Peripateticus saith, that they of Rhodes and Sicilia do call the Damask Prunes Brabula.
The Temperature and Virtues.
A. Plums that be ripe and new gathered from the tree, what sort soever they are of; do moisten and cool, and yield unto the body very little nourishment, and the same nothing good at all: for as Plums do very quickly rot, so is also the juice of them apt to putrefy in the body, and likewise to cause the meat to putrefy which is taken with them: only they are good for those that would keep their bodies soluble and cool; for by their moisture and slipperiness they do mollify the belly.
B. Dried plums, commonly called prunes, are wholesomer, and more pleasant to the stomach, they yield more nourishment, and better, and such as cannot easily putrefy. It is reported, saith Galen in his book Of the Faculties of Nourishments, that the best do grow in Damascus a city of Syria; and next to those, they that grow in Spain: but these do nothing at all bind, yet divers of the damask damson prunes very much; for damask damson prunes are more astringent, but they of Spain be sweeter. Dioscorides saith, that damask prunes dried do stay the belly; but Galen affirmth, in his books of the faculties of simple medicines, that they do manifestly loose the belly yet lesser than they that be brought out of Spain; being boiled with mead or honeyed water, which hath a good quantity of honey in it, they loose the belly very much (as the same author saith) although a man take them alone by themselves, and much more if the mead be supped after them. We most commend those of Hungary being long and sweet; yet more those of Moravia the chief and principal city in times past of the Province of the Marcomans: for these after they be dried, that the watery humour may be consumed away, be most pleasant to the taste, and do easily without any trouble so mollify the belly, as that in that respect they go beyond Cassia and Manna, as Thomas Iordanus affirmeth.
C. The leaves of the Plum tree are good against the swelling of the uvula, the throat, gums, & kernels under the throat and jaws; they stop the rheum and falling down of humours, if the decoction thereof be made in wine, and gargled in the mouth and throat.
D. The gum which cometh out of the Plum tree doth glue and fasten together, as Dioscorides saith.
E. Being drunk in wine it wasteth away the stone, and healeth lichens in infants and young children; if it be laid on with vinegar, it worketh the same effects that the gum of the Peach and Cherry tree doth.
F. The wild plums do stay and bind the belly, and so do the unripe plums of what sort soever, whiles they are sharp and sour, for then are they astringent.
G. The juice of sloes doth stop the belly, the lask and bloody flux, the inordinate course of women's terms, and all other issues of blood in man or woman, and may very well be used instead of Acatia, which is a thorny tree growing in Egypt, very hard to be gotten, and of a dear price, and therefore the better for wantons; albeit our plums of this country are equal unto it in virtues.
