Mao Mei

Prunus mume is a small deciduous tree of the Rosaceae, native to southern China and long cultivated across East Asia for its early-spring flowers and acidic fruit. It reaches 4–10 m, with dark grey, lightly fissured bark and slender greenish young twigs. Alternate, ovate to broadly elliptic leaves 4–8 cm long are finely serrate and short-acuminate. Solitary or paired, fragrant, five-petalled flowers — white through pink to deep rose — open on bare wood in late winter or earliest spring before the foliage. The drupaceous fruit is a globose, downy, yellow-green to apricot-yellow stone-fruit 2–3 cm across, very sour at maturity. Several distinct medicinal preparations of the fruit are recognised, of which the best-known is Wu Mei (the smoke-blackened ripe fruit). The Pinyin 'Mao Mei' is unusual and may denote a regional preparation or a transcription variant.