Mexican Plum, Native Texan
If you look beneath oak and pecan forests in the springtime, you’ll see (and smell) this delightful little tree. It’s one of the first trees to show its white color, and if you’re hiking nearby, it’s the most fragrant plant of the season.
Fragrant early spring flowers adorn Mexican plums in both landscapes and nature.
But this time of year things are more subtle. It produces quarter-sized plums that mature in September. They’re great food sources for birds and small mammals, and there are some outstanding recipes online for Mexican plum jelly.
Mexican plum fruit is colorful in the fall garden.
As a landscape tree, Mexican plums grow to be 20 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Their trunks are extremely coarse-textured with large plates of bark peeling off all through the year. Their leaves are equally coarse-textured, and the branches do have occasional thorns.
Use this where you might have used a purple plum, as one example. It’s a far better tree that will stay with you much longer.