Plum vs Greengage vs Damson: What's the Difference?
Short answer: Greengages and damsons are both plums. The everyday dessert plum is large, juicy, and sweet for eating fresh. A greengage is a small green-gold plum famous for intense honeyed sweetness. A damson is a small, oval, blue-black plum that's tart and astringent raw - a cooking plum for jams and gins. Mirabelles are tiny sweet yellow plums.
| 🟣 Plum | 🟢 Greengage | 🫐 Damson | 🟡 Mirabelle | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taste | Sweet flesh under tart, tannic skin is the plum signature — a built-in sweet-sour contrast. Greengages are pure honey; damsons astringent and jam-bound; Japanese plums juicy and mild. | Exceptionally sweet and honeyed with a dense, melting flesh and complex almond-and-apricot notes; the green skin masks a sugar level higher than most purple plums. | Sharply tart and astringent raw, with a thick dusty-blue skin and clingy stone; cooked with sugar it turns rich, winey, and intensely plummy — far deeper than a dessert plum. | Sweet and richly aromatic with a bright honey-and-apricot tang and a small freestone; the thin golden skin sometimes carries a red blush and a subtle almond note. |
| Type | Stone fruit | Stone fruit | Stone fruit | Stone fruit |
| Peak season | Summer, Autumn | Summer | Autumn | Summer |
| Origin | Multiple domestications: European plum near the Caucasus, Japanese plum in China | Likely Persia/Asia Minor; refined in France as the Reine Claude | Western Asia (near Damascus); long naturalized across Britain and Europe | Asia Minor; famously cultivated in Lorraine, northeastern France |
| Calories (per 100 g) | 46 | 46 | 46 | 47 |
| Sugar (per 100 g) | 9.9 g | 10 g | 9 g | 10 g |
| Vitamin C (per 100 g) | 9.5 mg | 8 mg | 10 mg | 9 mg |
| Typical price | Budget | Premium | Budget | Mid |
Under the single word “plum” sits a whole family of Prunus fruits, and greengages and damsons are two of its best-known members - each bred for a different job.
The everyday plum is the large, round, juicy dessert fruit in red, purple, yellow, or black, sweet and a little tart at the skin, made for eating out of hand. A greengage is smaller and unglamorous to look at - green to gold, sometimes freckled - but famous for a concentrated, honeyed sweetness that many rank as the finest of all plums for fresh eating.
A damson is a different proposition: small, oval, and deep blue-black with a heavy bloom, and mouth-puckeringly tart and astringent when raw. It’s a cooking plum, transformed by sugar and heat into superb jam, damson cheese, pies, and the classic damson gin. Rounding out the group, the mirabelle is a tiny, sweet, golden-yellow plum, beloved in France for tarts and eau-de-vie. So the rule of thumb: reach for a dessert plum or greengage to eat fresh, and a damson (or a glut of mirabelles) when you’re cooking or preserving.
Frequently asked questions
Are greengages and damsons types of plum?
Yes. All are plums in the genus Prunus. Dessert plums and greengages are usually forms of Prunus domestica; damsons are a smaller, tart subgroup (Prunus domestica subsp. insititia), as are mirabelles.
Can I eat a damson raw?
You can, but most are too tart and astringent to enjoy fresh. Damsons are cooking plums, coming into their own in jam, damson cheese, pies, and damson gin, where sugar balances their sharpness.
What makes a greengage special?
Greengages are prized for an unusually intense, honeyed sweetness despite their plain green-gold looks - many consider them the finest-flavoured plum for eating out of hand.