Interesting..i've heard of them.

What i gather is that these are more apricot then plum, while a pluot is more plum then apricot? I suppose both were bred in similar ways?

If you can grow apricots, frank, you ought to give an aprium a try.

I haven't tasted a really good aprium yet. My advice is plant an Orangered apricot.

Fruit-

What is your take...not enough flavor, not enough sugar, wrong texture???

Tilton-
My Hunza's are just starting to turn orange...so those will be the first ripe stonefruit for the season...for me. I plan on trying one of these and i also want to try one of those peacotums...

The first pluots and apriums were created by Floyd Zaiger: He crossed a plum and an apricot and the result was a plumcot-a 50/50 hybrid.

Then he crossed the plumcot back to a plum and the result was a pluot--75% plum, 25% apricot (dapple dandy pluot). He also crossed the plumcot with an apricot and the result was an aprium--75% apricot and 25% plum (flavor delight aprium).

As he got better at crossing plums with apricots, he began crossing plumcots to pluots resulting in pluots--37.50% apricot and 62.50% plum (splash pluot).

He also crossed an aprium with a plum and then back to an apricot and he got an aprium called Tasty Rich aprium--31.25% plum and 68.75% plum.

Bottom line is that not all apriums and pluots have the same plum and apricot ratio.

I don't think that Velvet sunrise are true apriums, I think that they are plumcots a 50/50 hybrid. I think that Kingsburg Orchards, the grower, might have mis-label them or maybe they tried to avoid confusion.
Read this article, it's interesting "http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/22/food/la-fo-fruit-20100722";

The breeder is Bradford, Lowell Glen. What I've read about him is that he is also a fruit breeder just like Zaiger, he is a private breeder for Kingsburg Orchards. He patents his fruits under one name and kingsburg orchards markets them as another name. He patented one of his 50/50 plum apricot hybrids as "sweetcot" and Kingsburg orchards markets it as "black velvet apricot"---very delicious fruit.

I have tried the black velvet apricot, crimson velvet, and sunrise velvet apricots--all are 50/50 hybrids. I want to try the Golden velvet apricot, a plum x peach x apricot hybrid.

http://www.bradfordgenetics.com/mainmenu.htm

Luther Burbank was breeding plumcots way back when.

Frank, I'm sure happy with my Flavor Delight. My tree only set one fruit this year and I ate it three days ago. Better than any apricot.

Frank:

I've only tried about four aprium. I'm sure there are some good ones but they aren't readily available. Orangered might not be great for you either but for me this year was superb.

"Luther Burbank was breeding plumcots way back when. "

Sorry, I forgot.

Raintree Nursery is selling one of Burbank's plumcots, it's called burbank plumcot. I wonder if that variety is a 50/50 cross because Luther also backcrossed the plumcot back to plums.

My apriums: flavor delight and cot-n-candy have been good. As good as my blenheim apricot. My problem so far, with the young trees, is that they haven't been very productive.

fruitnut - which apriums have you tried and found wanting?

I grew out some of the Burbank originals and they were not particularly good: lack of flavor and mealiness.

I have an interesting "aprium" I am fruiting this year, its called Weinberger. It looks like a plum with red skin but has orange flesh and tastes pretty much 50-50 plum/apricot. Shekar Pareh is another 50-50 taste guy I have grown for quite a few years. It looks like Sunrise Velvet above. Many nurseries classify it as an apricot but if you grow it it will be obvious it is a cross. Neither of these two I would call extraordinary in terms of taste but both are good fruits.

Scott

Tasty Rich is a good aprium primarily because it fruits so early for me, about 10 days before Tomcot. But it's not as good tasting as Tomcot.

Honey Rich has big fruit but only once in 8 years has really tasted better than just OK. It's my second earliest to mature so has hung on in my collection but this was it's last year. It's soft and not more than average on taste or sweetness.

Flavor Delight was discarded both in CA and TX. Yes I gave it two chances. I can't really remember that much about the fruit except that it was totally unmemorable. I've tried other things twice and none have worked any better the second time around.

I can't think of any others that DWN has released retail. But if they did the last 15 years I tried them and am not growing them now.

Apricots haven't fared any better than apriums in my testing. I've probably tried at least 30 to end up with five I really like. Doesn't mean they were bad just that for my taste and growing conditions they didn't work.

Yes, conditions. Here, early fruiting is a grave disadvantage, since it usually means early blooming.

I think Flavor Delight has a narrow climate adaptability because of its early bloom. My tree produces more dependably than the apricots in rainy spring weather here. Flavor Delight is not quite as flavorful as my Harcot, (which comes along just after FD starts), but it is better than many apricots. Best when dead-ripe. Fruits that fall from the tree during the night sometimes have a little intriguing "plum" flavor when still cool from the night air. The fall doesn't damage them as much as it would the softer apricot varieties.

I also have a Burbank plumcot which has very soft to mushy, perfumed but not particularly flavorful fruit which tends toward "bland" rather than "tart". Pretty little tree with showy bloom.

Here's where they came in.