However, bathed in a glorious, rich damson sauce, it makes a fantastic pud. This simple, crustless cheesecake is such a favourite of mine that I sometimes eat it for breakfast. Even the tame ones taste pretty wild, so I predict you will find them impossible to resist. Excellent varieties include the Farleigh damson and the Shropshire prune damson, while King and Merryweather are, when ripe, both sweet enough to eat raw. Or, for faux wildness, stick them in a hedge (clear away competitive growth around the planting site first). The trees are pretty hardy and, if you have limited space, can be trained against a sunny fence or wall. Of course, the surest way to avoid such pitfalls is to grow your own.

It only takes one enthusiast with preserving ambitions to strip a tree, and much disappointment can result from thinking, 'Ooh, I'll come back for those in a couple of days.' So keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks and, if you spot some branches laden with purple fruit, make the most of it as soon as you can. It's not hard, either: just simmer 2kg damsons with 800ml water until soft, scoop out the stones with a slotted spoon, add 2.3kg sugar, stir to dissolve, boil for 10 minutes then test for the setting point. They make glorious crumbles and cobblers, fabulous ice-creams and sorbets, and a sophisticated, wine-dark jam that is one of the finest things you'll ever get out of a preserving pan. However, like so many tart fruits, once cooked and sweetened, they surrender the most wonderful, complex, deep flavour. If you pick them sooner, eaten raw they will probably overwhelm you with tannic, cheek-hollowing sourness. It is technically possible to enjoy damsons straight off the tree, but only if you've found the right variety growing in a sunny spot so they're burstingly ripe – and that's a state that the local bird and wasp populations are unlikely to consent to. And as long as you have some sugar in your kitchen, they are immensely rewarding to cook. As long as you have access to a ladder, they are extremely easy to gather. When they start to arrive around the end of August, they put themselves forth in profusion, weighing down the branches like great purple gems. These gorgeous plums have skins that are dark as midnight and overlaid by a soft, dusky bloom.

Deeply fond as I am of all kinds of hedgerow berries, damsons seem particularly generous and inviting. Coming across a tree-full is the equivalent of hitting the foraging motherlode. You will find damsons growing in all kinds of locations, some quite wild – woodland and riverbanks – others much more urban, including allotments and waste ground. Yet, having shaken off the shackles of horticulture and made a break for freedom, they're there for the taking, which is one more point in their favour, as far as I'm concerned.

A subspecies of Prunus domestica, they are close siblings of garden plums. This may be because they are not truly wild, but generally escapees from domestic cultivation – plums gone rogue, if you will. Of all the wild fruits that start to become available as summer segues into autumn, damsons are perhaps the easiest to love.

Damson plum tart recipe