Prunus andersonii
Origin: California
Improvement status: Wild
Seeds per packet: 8
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
Also called "desert almond," desert peach is a highly prized wild plum species with tiny fruits (rarely reaching 1 inch in diameter) that have a peach-like fuzz and delicious flavor. The fruits are eaten fresh, or made into jams, jellies, sauces, etc. In dry years, they can be rather thin and leathery, but in wetter years get more juicy. The even tinier seeds are sometimes eaten like almonds (but do not eat any bitter seeds, as with almonds). The plant has very pretty pink flowers with five petals, a good reminder that the Prunus genus is part of the rose family — and the usually dull thorns at the end of each stem help prove the point too. It has potential to help create cold and drought-hardy cultivars of closely related fruits like apricots, Japanese peaches, and cherry plums, and it has utility as a rootstock as well.
Native to parts of California, Nevada, and Oregon, desert peach also has strong cold-hardiness, reportedly able to survive winters down to Zone 5. It tends to spread by suckers and can create large thickets over time. It is used for revegetaion and rehabilitation projects in areas with desert shrubs, mountain brush, pinyon-juniper, and chaparral vegetation.
In addition to its culinary use, desert peach is a dye plant, producing a green dye from its leaves and a dark-grey to green dye from the fruit. It also has a history of medicinal use, with mainly the bark or leaves used against diarrhoea, rheumatism, influenza, and colds, but the use of any part of the plant besides its fruit pulp should only ever be conducted with extreme caution, due to the presence of amygdalin and prunasin, substances which break down in the body to form cyanide or prussic acid.
Our California-grown seed comes from the good folks at Sheffield's Seed in Locke, NY.
GROWING TIPS: Soak for 24 hours then cold-moist stratify seeds 60-90 days. Protect germinating seed from rocents. Seeds can be slow to germinate, sometimes taking up to 18 months. Best grown in container and kept in a greenhouse or cold-frame for their first winter before planting in permanent position. There's not much literature on how this plant fares outside its native desert range, but its safe to say it will appreciate a dry, sunny position, and not want to be overwatered.
NOTE: Images of flowers from Matt Lavin of Bozeman, Montana, shared here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Unripe fruit image comes from Nadiatalent and is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Others are in the public domain.
