I posted some pics of my MDC wild plums in Kentucky here before, but updated pics from this past weekend. I planted some in 4' tubes as part of a plot screen in 2012, along with hazelnuts & elderberry without protection. My plums look more like small trees than shrubs, but suckering has really taken off in the last couple of years, as far as 12' to 15' from the original plants. Hard to get pics showing the suckers because they are mixed with hazelnuts and the few elderberry that survived (very few - the deer hammer those at my place). As mentioned before, MDC mixes american, chickasaw, sand, etc, so can't say which or how many of mine are american.
Plums are along the field side of the screen, I'd say 12' to 15' height for the tallest ones.
Looks like a heavy fruit year. Since they started fruiting 4-5 years in, at least some of them always have fruit in spite of their early average bloom time. Most years a lot of it.
I didn't try any caged plums, and even though these did well in tubes, those I planted elsewhere in tubes mostly fizzled and died after a couple of years. During that time I realized that native plums grow like weeds on this property; they show up literally anywhere, all the time, and left alone they do well. On trees like this volunteer in a plot (left, with camera hanging), deer hammer the suckers this time of year.
And yes, I see a definite benefit to having these on the property. Lots of bees in the spring, always songbirds camping out in them through the spring and summer, and critters vacuum up the fruit both in the tree and on the ground. Except while they are actively dropping fruit all day long, it's hard to find a single plum on the ground because they are cleaned up at least nightly, if not more often than that. They make a decent screen, especially when used in combination with other shrubs. They also begin bearing pretty young compared to persimmons and some of the other natives in my experience so far.
I've had years when I show up (I live in PA) to find entire plum trees defoliated by bagworms. I have shrugged and written them off as casualties of my absenteeism. I show up weeks later and they have put on completely new leaves and go on as if nothing happened. That's my kind of fruit tree.
