Talk:Cherry plum

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Some confusion here. Mirabelle and Cherry_Plum both mention Lorraine as producing 15,000 tons or 70% of the world's production of this fruit. But they are different species, Mirabelle is Prunus Domestica Insititia, Cherry Plum or Myrobalan is Prunus Cerasifera. I don't know which is correct, since I came to Wikipedia hoping to find the correct answer!

The term "mirabelle" (French in origin) is derived from "myrobalan" (Latin/Greek in origin). They are the same sort, as near as I can tell (it's a little difficult, since most of the best information is in French, and my French isn't the best) from a little research. Or, rather, mirabelles are a type of myrobalan. Cherry plums are another type (mostly grown in Britain) it would seem. The difference seems to be just a controversy of classification. It would appear that some botanists prefer to classify them as P. cerasifera or P. myrobalan, others as P. domestica "Myrobalan", or with the damsons in P. domestica insititia. Damsons/bullaces are the same way: older texts give P. insititia, while most recent ones use P. domestica insititia, and some make the whole lot of European plum varieties P. x domestica (considering them all to be hybrids). Unless I'm wrong, the articles ought to be merged. -GSwift 07:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)