Burbank is a Japanese plum that produces showy purple-red blooms in spring. The tree is vigorous, spreading, precocious, and resistant to leaf scale. It will need another Japanese plum for pollination; Methley, Santa Rosa, Bubblegum, Satsuma, and Shiro are good pollenizers for Burbank. This plum will crop heavily and should be thinned for optimal fruit size.

Ripening late August in NY, this is a dependable plum. The skin is red over yellow, and the yellow flesh is aromatic and sweet but not cloying. The plum is clingstone, but the pit is very small. It ripens over several weeks, which is a bonus for backyard growers, but it is firm enough for commercial production.

Luther Burbank (1849-1926) was one of America's most notable fruit growers. Among the hundreds of varieties he propogated are 113 varieties of plums and prunes, and he was almost single-handedly responsible for developing the market for Asian plums in this country. Burbank plum is a seedling of Wassau, which Luther Burbank imported from Japan in 1883. It was one of his earlier creations, but was a national favorite until the 1940's.