Virginal Prune

Prunus virginalis - Virginale Plum

A rare fruit among ancient plums, the Virginale stands out with its yellowish-green, waxy skin, dotted with small whitish spots and sometimes marked with purple patches.

Poiteau emphasizes a crucial detail: this plum must be savored at the precise moment its skin still displays the typical green of the Reine-Claude. At this stage, its firm flesh releases a delicious fragrance that full maturity (when the skin becomes dull) causes to fade. A lesson in the art of fruit living, recorded with the precision of a naturalist.

The Virginale plum tree forms a strong and vigorous stem, with spreading and slightly tortuous branches. Its buds, pale green and somewhat hairy, turn brown or purple in the sun.

The leaves, oval to elliptical, convex, measure from 10 to 16 centimeters long. They are dark green and slightly glossy on top, pale and hairy underneath, bordered with rounded teeth. The thick petiole bears two or three large cup-shaped glands.

The flowers, 3 centimeters wide, are born in twos or threes on pubescent peduncles.

The fruit, rounded, reaches 4 centimeters in diameter, sometimes slightly flattened at the base and top, marked by an often deep furrow. Its greenish, melting flesh, a little acerbic before full maturity, separates well from the skin but adheres strongly to the thick stone. The water content is abundant and very pleasant. Poiteau warns against confusion with the white Apricot plum, which is similar in color.

This plate is extracted from the Traité des Arbres Fruitiers by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin, a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalist illustration.

It combines the rigor of scientific drawing with a rare artistic sensibility, characteristic of the great plates from the golden age of illustrated botany.