At a store near my house, pitted prunes sell for $5 a pound, and dried plums sell for $12 a pound. Why? By definition, a prune and a dried plum are the same thing; however, a lot of people don’t know that. Many people think that a prune is a type of fruit, and that a dried prune is a fresh prune that has been dried, like a dried apple is a fresh apple that has been dried. Some people are willing to pay a lot more for a bag of dried plums than a bag of prunes. I suspect the reason that people are willing to pay more for dried plums than prunes is that ‘dried plum’ sounds nicer than ‘prune.’ The word ‘prune’ has an unpleasant sound to it. As silly as that sounds, I think that may actually be the reason. The price difference has nothing to do with where the prunes come from. Nearly all of the plums grown in the U.S. come from California’s Central Valley.