Torrey Pines

'Torrey Pines' is a California natal plum selection recorded as producing both satisfactory fruit crops and abundant viable pollen. That second trait is what makes it strategically important. Carissa macrocarpa in cultivation shows varying degrees of unfruitfulness, and Morton attributes much of it to plants that are effectively self-infertile and need cross-pollination to set. A clone that both bears its own crop and supplies plenty of good pollen is therefore the natural companion planting for a heavy-set but pollen-poor selection. Together with 'Fancy' it is one of the two cultivars usually named when natal plum is discussed as a fruit crop rather than as a barrier hedge in California and the Southwest. It is uncommon in the retail trade and generally moves through rare-fruit exchanges and specialist growers.