Well - I've always understood the bullace to be more rounded, and my Kentish Great, great aunt was quite specific! Doesn't mean she was right, of course! But there is confusion, I agree, not least because of cross-pollination. One thing the experts seem to agree on is that the sloe is smaller and is the fruit of the blackthorn - which has sharp thorns (and I have had many a scratch to prove it) whereas the bullace doesn't, and fruits are more clustered.
Whatever - they both make pretty decent spirit liqueurs - and I have a couple of bottles that I have patiently waited to mature from last autumn!
Dove, they've used the same photo for the bullace and damson! But I think I must be the one in a muddle; yes the bullaces were round but much bigger than the sloes and no horrible thorns. We had a tree close to our farmhouse.
I do make real jam and it is possible to make a sugar reduced jam useing Splenda to substitute say 50% of the sugar.. Damsons make good jam... I am making Pear and Greengage jam tomorrow.. Generally you use equal amounts offruit to sugar.. I tend to use either Preserving sugar or Jam sugar as it gives a better set...
You cannot beat the taste of homemade... Shop jam is often low in fruit and high in glucose syrup not exactly tasty ot healthy..
Thanks everyone - a wealth of info... never heard of bullaces until now. I didn't get round to picking them as intended, went today and thought they looked much smaller. Somebody must've beaten me to them but nonetheless, I picked some just to make a small sample of jam perhaps.
I now reckoned they are bullaces but could they be sloes? They're quite small - one is sitting on a five pence coin,
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Well - I've always understood the bullace to be more rounded, and my Kentish Great, great aunt was quite specific! Doesn't mean she was right, of course! But there is confusion, I agree, not least because of cross-pollination. One thing the experts seem to agree on is that the sloe is smaller and is the fruit of the blackthorn - which has sharp thorns (and I have had many a scratch to prove it) whereas the bullace doesn't, and fruits are more clustered.
Whatever - they both make pretty decent spirit liqueurs - and I have a couple of bottles that I have patiently waited to mature from last autumn!
Some lovely pictures and descriptions of bullaces here
http://www.readsnursery.co.uk/bullaces/
The ones I know best because they grew all over the village where I grew up, are the Shepherd's Bullace type.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
My memory is playing me false.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I do make real jam and it is possible to make a sugar reduced jam useing Splenda to substitute say 50% of the sugar.. Damsons make good jam... I am making Pear and Greengage jam tomorrow.. Generally you use equal amounts offruit to sugar.. I tend to use either Preserving sugar or Jam sugar as it gives a better set...
You cannot beat the taste of homemade... Shop jam is often low in fruit and high in glucose syrup not exactly tasty ot healthy..
Thanks everyone - a wealth of info... never heard of bullaces until now. I didn't get round to picking them as intended, went today and thought they looked much smaller. Somebody must've beaten me to them but nonetheless, I picked some just to make a small sample of jam perhaps.
I now reckoned they are bullaces but could they be sloes? They're quite small - one is sitting on a five pence coin,
but they could be small bullaces left over.
Any thoughts? Many thanks.