Prunus mexicana
species of plant
Prunus mexicana, commonly known as the Mexican plum, inch plum, or bigtree plum, is a North American species of plum tree.
Description
Prunus mexicana has a single trunk and an open crown, and reaches a height of 4.5–11.5 meters (15–38 feet). Its dark gray bark is banded with horizontal lenticels. It has dark green, simple ovate leaves 5–11.5 centimeters (2–4+1⁄2 inches) long and 3–5 cm (1+1⁄4–2 in) wide.
In the early spring, it is covered with five-petaled, fragrant, white or pale pink flowers 1.8–2.5 cm (3⁄4–1 in) wide. The dark red or purple fruit ripen late in the fall.
Similar species
P. mexicana is very similar to P. americana and they intergrade along a broad contact zone centered around Arkansas and Missouri. These intermediate individuals, as hybrids, are impossible to assign to a specific species.
Taxonomy
P. mexicana is included in the section Prunocerasus.
Distribution and habitat
The native range of the species stretches from South Dakota east to Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, and Georgia, and south to the Mexican states of Coahuila and San Luis Potosí.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Prunus mexicana” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3011509. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prunus mexicana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.