Prunus spinosa the British Army, blackthorn sticks are carried by commissioned officers of the Royal Irish Regiment; this is a tradition also in Irish regiments in some Commonwealth countries. The leaves resemble tea leaves, and were used as an adulterant of tea. Shlomo Yitzhaki, a Talmudist and Tanakh commentator of the High Middle Ages, writes that the sap (or gum) of "P. spinosa" (which he refers to as the ) was used as an ingredient in the making of some inks used for manuscripts. The fruit stones have been found in Swiss lake dwellings. Evidence of the early use of sloes by
Prunus simonii is particularly aromatic, much more so than "Prunus salicina", with a comparatively high level of hexyl acetate, which gives apples their aroma. Plant breeder Luther Burbank devoted a lot of work to hybridizing this species with the Japanese plum ("Prunus salicina") and developed a number of cultivars from the hybrid. Of these, the cultivar 'Climax' was particularly notable for its importance to the fruit shipping industry of California. Other influential plum cultivars that Burbank developed with "P. simonii" ancestry include 'Maynard', 'Chalco', 'Santa Rosa', and 'Formosa'. Those two species and the European species "Prunus cerasifera" have contributed the majority of