Santa Rosa plum is one of the plum varieties best suited to Texas weather. It is self fertile, but probably bears better with a pollinator or a grafted branch from another variety of plum.

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I bought a "Santa Rosa Semi Dwarf" plum from Lowes store in spring of 2011. Beware, semi dwarf seems not meant to be small- despite chopped off roots it took off and grew like crazy. It's about 20 feet tall now. Don't be lazy on pruning, you don't get much of a chance to fix that later. After a couple years we had blooms and fruit. One year we collected a number of freshly fallen fruit and got to eat some small tasty plums. Other years we have been overrun by brown rot. I haven't pruned much and have not sprayed for disease control. It blooms very early, briefly, in spring so I consider it a help to pollinators. It's a nicely shaped tree, got that lollipop feel of Callery pear. The falling fruit in summer makes for a mess for several weeks. It also suckers, and has been a problem for the asparagus that I planted it too close to. Sited at a distance, it might be useful for insects and wildlife and not unattractive, but not really beautiful either.

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