Plums

"Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree, And falls, through wind, before the fall should be."

"Prunes and custard followed. And if anyone complains that prunes, even when mitigated by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a misers heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in misers veins who have denied themselves wine and warmth for eighty years and yet not given to the poor, he should reflect that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune."

"Many old writers mention the great and famous city of Damascus. Now in the territory of the Damascenes there is a very large quantity of the so‑called cuckoo-apples, cultivated with great skill. Hence this fruit gets the special name of "damson," excelling the same kind grown in other countries."

"CARDINAL: What, art thou lame? SIMPCOX: Ay, God Almighty help me! SUFFOLK: How cam’st thou so? SIMPCOX: A fall off of a tree. WIFE: A plum-tree, master. GLOUCESTER: How long hast thou been blind? SIMPCOX: O, born so, master. GLOUCESTER: What, and wouldst climb a tree? SIMPCOX: But that in all my life, when I was a youth. WIFE: Too true; and bought his climbing very dear. GLOUCESTER: Mass, thou lov’dst plums well, that wouldst venture so. SIMPCOX: Alas, good master, my wife desired some damsons, And made me climb, with danger of my life."

"The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or being early pluck’d, is sour to taste."