Wickson Plum

Wickson plum was bred by Luther Burbank and named after his real friend, Edward J. Wickson — a genuinely significant figure in California agricultural history who wrote influential late-19th-century books on California horticulture and farming, helped select the actual site of the University of California, Davis campus, and worked in the UC system for over three decades. Wickson Hall on the modern UC Davis campus is named for him, the same real person this plum honors. Along with Santa Rosa, also documented in this database, Wickson is one of Burbank's hybrid plums descended from crosses of Prunus salicina, Prunus simonii, and American plum species — a combination Burbank used repeatedly to bring together Asian plum size, flavor, and color with the firmness and acidity of P. simonii and the hardiness of native American plums. The fruit is genuinely prized among heirloom fruit growers today for its intensely sweet, honeyed flavor, often considered one of the best-tasting plums of the entire Burbank breeding legacy, though it is less commercially grown than some of his other releases due to a shorter storage life.