Gifford

'Gifford' is the natal plum clone that Florida horticultural literature has consistently singled out as a dependable fruiting selection rather than a landscape shrub. Julia Morton's Fruits of Warm Climates, summarising mid-century Florida experience with the crop, names it as one of the best fruit bearers grown in the state. That is a meaningful distinction in Carissa macrocarpa, because a large share of seedling plants are light croppers or never set fruit at all owing to partial self-incompatibility, so a clone with a documented bearing record is worth far more than an unnamed seedling. It is grown at full shrub size with the species' formidable forked thorns intact, which is exactly what lets it carry a real crop load rather than the token handful of berries a knee-high groundcover cultivar produces. For a Florida or Gulf Coast edible hedge where the harvest is the point, 'Gifford' is the historically recommended starting place.