Wild beach plums: Is this tangy fruit suddenly trending again?

BY GWEN THOMPSON

Would Princess Aurora have slumbered shoreside within a white bower of wild beach plum blossoms, if Sleeping Beauty had been set in Maine? It all depends which century she slept through.

Plums in Peril

Although they’re considered to be at fairly low risk of extinction globally, and once flourished along the sandy shores of Southern and Mid-Coast Maine, Prunus maritima is now classified as “critically imperiled” on the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry‘s list of endangered plants, documented in only eleven towns in Cumberland, Knox, Sagadahoc, and York counties, due to beachfront development encroaching on its habitat.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.