One of the perks of western Oregon’s mild winters is the fact that many deciduous plants reawaken early in the year. One of my favorite deciduous shrubs is Indian plum, a west coast member of the rose family. Sarah and I have a three-foot tall sapling potted on our deck and its buds are beginning to open.
We purchased the plant last year from Portland Audubon’s Native Plant Sale when it was leafed-out but not flowering. Indian plum is a dioecious species, meaning individuals are male or female, never both. I am quite interested in these types of plants, because I have been researching cottonwoods, which are also dioecious, for several years.
This morning, I noticed a tiny inflorescence (left) and a set of leaves (right) emerging from the largest bud on our little Indian plum.
Since this will be the first set of flowers it produces, I do not know if they will be male or female and I feel like an expectant parent in the pre-ultrasound era! I am hoping it’s a girl, so I can try my hand at raising new saplings from the seeds, if the birds don't beat me to them.
Last year, I sketched the male and female flowers and recorded the gender of every flowering Indian plum I found to determine sex ratios in different locations. Of 162 flowering individuals, 125 were male and only 37 were female. I guess that means mine is most likely a male, too.
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