Fruit matures in mid-season; about one and one-half inches in diameter roundish-truncate, light amber-yellow with a blush, overspread with thin bloom; stem slender, adhering strongly to the fruit; flesh pale yellow, firm, sweet; of good quality; stone free or nearly so, one inch by five-eighths inch in size, obovate, acute at the apex, blunt at the base, with thickly pitted surfaces; ventral suture wide, usually blunt but sometimes distinctly winged; dorsal suture with a deep groove.
OREN
OREN
Prunus americana
1. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:285 fig. 1900. 2. Waugh Plum Cult. 174. 1901. 3. Budd-Hansen Am. Hort. Man. 299. 1903.
Bartlett 1. Bingaman 1.
Waugh places Oren with the “Miner-like” plums but as the variety grows here it is a typical western Americana—the characters of this species in leaf, fruit and stone being well shown in the accompanying plate. It is one of the best of the Americanas in both fruit and tree. The fruits are large and of good shape, perhaps a little dull in color and not quite as good in quality as a few other Americanas but still averaging very well in all fruit-characters. The flesh is very nearly free from the stone. The trees are typical of the species, shaggy of trunk and limb, straggling and unkempt in growth of top, but hardy, robust, healthy and reliable in bearing. It would seem as if this variety is rather too good to be allowed to pass out of cultivation until there are more Americanas that are better.
Oren was taken from the wild in Black Hawk County, Iowa, about 1878, by J. K. Oren. Mr. Oren grew trees of this plum on his farm and permitted all who came to take sprouts, cions and seed until the variety was very generally disseminated locally. Who introduced it to the trade and when is not known.
Tree small, spreading, low, dense-topped, hardy, often unproductive; branches roughish, slightly zigzag, thorny, dark ash-brown, with small lenticels; branchlets slender, long, twiggy, with internodes of average length, green changing to dark chestnut-brown, glabrous, with large, conspicuous, raised lenticels; leaf-buds small, short, obtuse, free.