There have been poems of plums since ancient times. I don't know if plums and apricots in the north are the same kind of fruit, or what is the difference.

Modern apricots and plums are not the same, but they are close relatives, and plums evolved from apricots.

The plum in early poems, such as the plum in the Book of Songs, may not be the plum in modern south, but may be apricots or other plants. Because the Book of Songs is a poem written by China in the Central Plains, and childhood is a kind of Jiangnan. Mei in later poems is hard to say.