The documentation of ancient plums growing in antiquity is sparse. The best evidence of that oldest existence is best documented through Americas most famous pomologist, Luther Burbank, who reported in his twelve volume botanical literary classic, Small Fruits, Volume IV page 136, that the European plum, Prunus domestica, and its ancestor fruit originated in the Caucasus Mountains near the Caspian Sea. Burbank detailed evidence that the prune (dried plum) was a staple food of the Tartars, Mongols, Turks, and Huns who maintained a crude horticulture from a very early period. Several websites have put forth the absurd idea that, because the European plum, Prunus domestica, seeds were not found in the ruins of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, whereas, most other old world fruits were, that this plum could be concluded to be a recent hybrid of spontaneous chromosome doubling to produce a hexaploid offspring.
The earliest reference to plum history in the American colonies came from Prince Nursery of Flushing, New York, that was established in 1737 and reported in 1771 in an advertisement 33 kinds of plums for sale. These plum trees were no doubt European...