Artists and writers wax lyrical about the beauty of the perfect peach, but plums, sweeping across the colour palette from deepest purple to pale gold, have to be right up there with the most sensual of fruit. Flavourwise, a ripe British plum, with its slightly tart skin and juicy sweet flesh, can rival the best stone fruit Europe has to offer.

Of the 1,000 or so varieties of plum, more than 350 grow in Britain, some better for eating, some for cooking, though the market is dominated by the most famous, the Victoria plum, which meets both requirements. However, supermarket shelves are frequently dominated by bigger, but often disappointingly firm and insipid-tasting imports which inevitably have to be picked before they are ripe.

Why are so few British varieties generally available? The British season really only runs for about six weeks, says John Edgeley, senior lecturer in crop technology, specialising in fruit, at Pershore College, Worcestershire.

Orchards in the Pershore area have been famous for plums since medieval times, and the town holds a plum festival each August, of which Edgeley is also the chairman. Because the season is so short, he says, “Many supermarkets don’t want the bother of winding down their overseas production, just to do a short home-grown promotion. Also, this year cold days and nights at flowering time have resulted in the total British yield being down to only around 15 per cent. Plums are harder to grow than apples, because they are susceptible to silver leaf and bacterial canker.

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"However, more people are looking towards protecting trees against the cold using the stone-fruit equivalent of polytunnels [already being used by cherry growers]. Also, on a positive note, many old orchards are being renovated. Often you find people banding together to buy community orchards and grafting old varieties from the national collection at Brogdale, so while total planting throughout Britain may be down, local collections are gathering pace.” Pershore even has its own named fruit since, in 1833, the landlord of the local Butchers Arms found wild plums growing in nearby Tiddesley Wood. The Pershore Yellow Egg was developed: “A cooking variety, which,” says Edgeley, “is not for eating raw, but makes the most amazing jam.”

And did you know that each variety of plum stone has its own distinct marking? So, when a basket of several hundred plum stones was found aboard the wreck of the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, the varieties could still by identified by comparing them with the plum stones that form part of the national collection.

Readers’ queries

Where can I buy Cornish crab meat in the absence of a fishmonger?

Waitrose has just launched a range of hand-picked, white and brown, fresh and potted meat sourced from Newlyn fishermen, supplied by Seafood & Eat It, a small venture started by a former fisherman and his brother. White crab, £4.99 for 100g (www.waitrose.com).

If you have a food query, e-mail food.detective@thetimes.co.uk

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