Photo: Gilles Ayotte, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Canada Plum

Prunus nigra

Also called Canadian plum, black plum.

The northernmost native plum, a hardy small tree with fragrant white flowers that blush pink as they age and red to yellow plums for jam.

Showy flowersEdibleWildlife value

Type: Small tree
Mature height: 10–30 ft
USDA zones: 2–6
Growth rate: Medium
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Average
Grows wild in: Floodplain forests, old fields and edges
Native range: 12 states, north and west to Minnesota and south to Indiana
List all 12
Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin
Also recorded in 2 other states, outside its native range. See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Canada plum is the northernmost native plum. Jacques Cartier recorded it along the Saint Lawrence River in 1535, after Native people had brought him the dried fruit. It is often mistaken for American plum, but its flower clusters look pink even when the petals are pure white, because the flower cups and sepals are tinged red. Its leaf teeth are rounded and tipped with glands, where American plum's are sharp. Ohio lists it as endangered, and NatureServe ranks it critically imperiled in Ohio and Iowa. Grow it as a small fruiting tree for a cold-winter yard, or along a hedgerow for the birds.

Size, growth and what to expect

Canada plum is a small tree of 10 to 30 feet, often in a clump, with crooked, upright branches and a flat-topped crown. It grows at a medium pace, a foot and a half a year in our growth estimator. Seedlings bear their first plums at 4 to 6 years.

White flowers open from April into June, two to four together, before or with the leaves, and they often fade to pink. The plums ripen in August and September, red, orange or yellowish and about an inch long. They taste sour raw but are excellent cooked or in jam, and birds and other wildlife eat them.

It grows wild from New Brunswick west to Manitoba and south to Ohio, Illinois and Iowa. It favors woodland borders, bottomland forests and river valleys. In New England it is native only in northwestern Connecticut, western Massachusetts and Vermont, and introduced elsewhere.

How to grow Canada Plum

Canada plum grows in the open or at a woodland edge, in full sun or part shade. It adapts to many soils and grows best in a moist, rich one, limestone included. Plant it 15 feet from a wall and at least 15 feet from overhead wires, and set trees 15 feet apart.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Sow the pits in fall an inch deep under hardware cloth. For spring, keep them damp and warm for one to two months, then chill them in the refrigerator for two to three months.

Water weekly through the first summer, then only in a long drought. Rabbits and voles gnaw young bark and deer browse the shoots, so guard each sapling with wire for its first two or three years. It sends up root sprouts and grows into a clump, so pull them if you want a single tree.

Plums need pollen from a second plum to set fruit, and a thicket from one root counts as one tree, so plant two or more from different seed. Plum pocket, a Taphrina fungus, swells many young fruits to several times their size without a seed, and the shriveled fruit hangs on through winter. As with other plums, every part but the skin and flesh of the fruit holds cyanide compounds, so never eat the pits.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (11)