Fancy

'Fancy' was selected in California in the 1950s and is the best documented of the true fruiting natal plums. Unlike the sprawling landscape clones that dominate the nursery trade, it is an erect, upright grower, and it was chosen specifically because it bore an abundance of large fruits containing few seeds. Seediness is the main eating drawback of ordinary natal plum, where a berry can hold up to sixteen small flat seeds, so a low-seed selection with heavy set is genuinely useful for fresh eating and for jelly making where the pulp yield matters. Along with 'Torrey Pines' it is the cultivar most often cited in California rare-fruit circles as being grown for fruit output rather than for hedging. It remains scarce in commerce; most retail natal plum sold today is either an unnamed seedling or one of the dwarf ornamental clones.