american persimmon...a drought resistant and delicious fruit and source of beautiful carving wood

Wayne Mackenzie wrote:

Dan Boone wrote:
I would also be looking for (or making a road trip to get seeds for) diospyros texana, the Texas persimmon.  From what little I know about them, they seem likely to be better adapted to your biome.

I actually had a Texas seedling for awhile. It just sat there and sulked. I finally pulled it to use the spot for something else.

Doh!  Well, that's that, then.  

Although to be honest, this is basically the behavior of every American Persimmon tree I've ever planted from seed, too.  They don't die, but after five or six years if they aren't perfectly happy with their situation they might easily still be belly-button tall.  I've seen feral ones grow much faster, but planted ones just have not done a lot for me.

Dan Boone wrote:

Doh!  Well, that's that, then.  

Although to be honest, this is basically the behavior of every American Persimmon tree I've ever planted from seed, too.  They don't die, but after five or six years if they aren't perfectly happy with their situation they might easily still be belly-button tall.  I've seen feral ones grow much faster, but planted ones just have not done a lot for me.

I don’t believe it was a good seedling. It didn’t do anything under controlled conditions either.

The American seedling was growing like a weed in a tree pot. It was getting full exposure and the desert delivers that big time. I waited for it to go dormant before planting it.
This is why I still have hope.

We planted 2 a couple of years ago.  The seem to be taking forever to grow.  I this usual?

I've never tried planting them from seed. I live on a ridge in WV, and the D virginiana grow wild all over--they prefer ridges. Unfortunately, transplanting isn't much of an option as they have long and angled taprooots=--like, they seem to run out horizontally a foot below the surface. Consequently I can't get RID of some growing in my garden or next to my compost bin. By the way--if I remember right, when my ex was carving spoons he found persimmon was one of those that was beautiful briefly but them faded to a dull brown. He ended up using mostly black walnut, which doesn't change, and black cherry whose red heartwood only gets a deeper red.

John F Dean wrote:We planted 2 a couple of years ago.  The seem to be taking forever to grow.  I this usual?

plants being plants, it depends on the situation.  
I started with fresh seed and 6 years later a few of my trees grown from those seeds are already producing fruit.

Mary Wildfire wrote:...... Consequently I can't get RID of some growing in my garden or next to my compost bin.

I've discovered they sucker from roots very easy.  Any existing tree can lead to young trees starting from the roots.

I planted saplings 8 or 9 years ago, collected at the county extension office for free.  They are finally over my head, but have not flowered yet.  There is a volunteer persimmon just across the drive in the tree line which fruited once only.  I wish I knew how to encourage them further.

Several years back they were attacked by twig girdler:



Supposedly, they leave an attractant for re-infestation, but I burned all the evidence and they haven't been back (knock on good wood!)

I have a very small (1' tall) Texas Persimmon. I'm trying to select a pollinator for it. What will cross pollinate a Texas Persimmon? I live in Mesa, AZ, USDA zone 9, where we enjoy bipolar weather. That's up to 115 degrees through the long summer and and down into the 20's in the short winter. I am not sure if my current tree is a male or a female. Any suggestions?

The site is in need of updating (and finishing---life got ahold of me and I'm woefully behind I'm afraid) but I have http://persimmonpudding.com/

Yes, it can take a long time for young persimmons to grow. They can even look like they're near death for extended periods...sometimes more than a season! But I can't think of a better long-term, more useful fruit tree. Planting them will also be part of your legacy. But even if you do not like the bletting process turning fruits mushy...almost liquid-like or maybe gel-like in a wet tissue paper skin, know that EVERYTHING eats them. Just about anything that walks, crawls, or flies. In my current situation, I can't have them. But I've planted and spec'd thousands. I am at the beginning stages on helping a friend with them at the moment. Anyway, while the site above can help, I just wanted to clarify a couple things which in the thread (and elsewhere) sounded like there might be some confusion.

D. virginiana grows in places that rarely get frost, and they get ripe persimmons. One does not need a frost prior to harvest. Basically, they ripen so late and need such a long time to blett, that in many areas, you actually might get a frost prior to fruit dropping their astringency. We do get frosts/freezes here. Wild trees are all over the place with respect to qualities like flavor, ripening time, growth, etc...just like a lot of plants. The problem is that it takes SO LONG to ascertain these qualities given the wait time until production. Most of the known varieties were selected from the wild and selected for certain qualities. There are those who want larger fruit size, different flavors (flavors are often quite complex), harvest timing, etc. Some selections at orchards are only for fruit flavor and size together. I often caution people who cull and disregard persimmon trees simply because the flavor might not be what they wanted or the fruits too small. We know nothing about how those genes might benefit us from random gene assortment.  That said, I think it's smart to select a number of cultivars for everything from blending fruit to aiding with processing by extending ripening across a larger part of season. Most of us don't have the time to process hundreds or thousands of pounds of fruit all at once. The careful selection of cultivars doesn't necessarily mean you're killing future gene transmission, you're just providing the backbone for your fruit harvesting efforts. And nothing says you can't plant them in multiple zones. Some of you are on a fair amount of land and have that ability.

There was a woman who for a good many years actually canned persimmon pulp and shipped it all over the place. She canned in steel cans. Alas, when I found her she had closed the business permanently years prior. She has since passed away. So, it's possible anyway. I have never run across anyone who home canned it and got a decent product. I'd love to see it as storage would be less an issue and would fit in much better with putting food by.

A quick word on usage...if a recipe or your use calls for peeled, chopped, sliced or similar efforts, you're not using a recipe for Diospyros virginiana or you have Asian persimmons. There is nothing wrong with that, I eat Asian persimmons as well. But American persimmon does not lend itself to those methods simply because the skin is so thin and if it has been properly bletted, the persimmons look like little bags of heavy liquidy gel. There are also types of Asian persimmons like the commonly available Hatchiya that also need bletting in order to remove astringency much like American persimmons. The benefit of those is that you can let them blett, then freeze, and during hot weather get them out and spoon out the pulp like pudding. Try it. Oh, and usually there are no seeds.

Do consider persimmons and if you have the room, consider multiple varieties (even randomly assorted wild type) as well as Asian persimmons and hybrids. They all have a part to play and qualities of great use to growies!

Reviving this thread because I'm planning to plant a few persimmons once I denude my property of bamboo. My question is if I get grafted self pollinating varieties such as prok or yates, will they pollinate a wild persimmon? I ask because there's a nearby persimmon that I believe is a female tree that has gone unpollinated, since it dropped a bunch of small green/black unripe fruit mid summer. I would love to see that tree suddenly become productive as well!

I planted four of them a couple years ago. Mine are still small but put on pretty good growth this year. Does anyone know if the fruit will ripen in zone 4? Or if I'll even get fruit?  I would love to try these, I've never had the opportunity.

I know that Joann Fabric, or for that matter, any good-sized fabric store would carry this "fabric."  I think that you could take a large square (or circle) of fabric and fill with fruit and then tie the corners together with a rubber band or string ( if you're not apt to sew your own bag or have a place to purchase one for a reasonable amount of money.)

Dan Boone wrote:A year ago somebody gave me the suggestion to squeeze the persimmons in one of those zippered mesh laundry bags that has the holes just a bit smaller than your average persimmon seed.  It's messy and you need strong hands, but it works really well.  Just hold the bag with one hand and work the mass with your other hand.  Sticky pulp will accumulate on your hand, so you'll have to scrape that into the bowl as well.  

The bags launder well (that's what they are designed for) and are re-usable, though they do stain a bit.  

I'm going to have to delay my morning walk for this one, I have so much information to impart.
I live in WV, zone 6. Here wild D virginia grow mostly on ridges, are perfectly hardy, become forest trees, and they vary considerably in their time of ripening--which explains the myth of needing a frost as some trees ripen that late. They also vary in productivity, bearing very heavily some years, barely at all other years. They flower in June, so it's not frosts. These fruits are the size of golf balls and full of sizable seeds; when I tediously remove the seeds and some other hard bits, the pile of refuse is the same size as the pile of usable pulp. I haven't found a better method of extracting the seeds, but when I borrowed my neighbor's strainer with a pumpkin screen, I could put the already deseeded pulp through that for a filtered version that had any missed seed and bits of hard skin etc. removed.
I'd grow the Asian ones but they're only hardy to zone 7 or 8. If anyone has tried that Nikita's Gift, I'd be interested to know how it worked out.
But here's the big news: we have here quite few grafted trees, grafted onto the wild sprouts (especially if those sprouts were male, as the grafting accomplishes a sex change operation). At least some of the cultivars, the scions, are hybrids with the Texas tree. I don't know how big D. texensis fruits are--but the grafted trees' fruits are double the size of the wild D virginia fruits. And they are nearly seedless--on some trees, some fruits have what I call protoseeds, tiny ones, and an occasional fruit has one big seed, but most are entirely seedless which makes them much easier to use. Supposedly this is because the two species have different numbers of chromosomes. I'm not sure where you can get scions--my neighbor took care of that--but one option might be joining the Fruit Growers association, or maybe it's Fruit and Nut Growers.
Two more points--I throw the seed wad into the woods near openings where wild trees might fit. If I put it in my compost I'll have persimmon seedlings in my garden, and these trees have deep, often angled taproots, they're really hard to get rid of where you don't want them.
And there is a tradeoff on picking off a tree (or shaking them down if it's small enough) and picking them off the ground. You risk contamination from fruits picked off the ground, but you risk unripe, astringent fruit if you pick it off the tree--though deep orange color and soft texture usually signal ripeness.
I don't think persimmons make good canned fruit or cooked food. But I have three recipes I use--persimmon muffins, a flat bar cookie with a lemon glaze, and persimmon cake. If anyone wants these recipes, they can email me at my last name, which is Wildfire, and the domain is my husband's spectrumz dot com.

I have several wild persimmon trees on my property but not worth the effort. They are all seeds and not much fruit. It is fun to watch the young opossum eating them though. I wonder if a domestic one would be better. Or if there is something I can do to make the wild ones better

Saralee Couchoud wrote:I have several wild persimmon trees on my property but not worth the effort. They are all seeds and not much fruit. It is fun to watch the young opossum eating them though. I wonder if a domestic one would be better. Or if there is something I can do to make the wild ones better

The wonderful flavor makes them worth all those seeds for us...in the past we picked up and ate most of them on daily walks spitting seeds along the way.

When there was an abundance dehydrating them whole makes the seeds easy to remove...or same as above, easy to spit the seeds

The cleaned seeds are nice for some games that take numerous pieces like wari.

Coincidentally I just picked about 40 pounds of persimmons off a tree yesterday...  In my many years of trying to grow food or fruit out here in North Florida I have met with few successes...  Growing persimmons is one happy exception.  (I think that part of the reason is that it is because persimmons are native to this area and the nearby woods are full of them).  The tree that I picked the fruit from is a grafted one.  I presume that it is an oriental one grafted onto a native rootstock.  It got me thinking how much I would like to have more of them...  I love the taste of the wild ones but the fruits here are so small and usually are high up in the tree and hard to gather..  The oriental ones are so much larger and more accessible...  However to buy them already grafted is very expensive,.. around $30 apiece...   There are so many persimmon saplings coming up in the woods so that it would be easy for me to get them to use as the rootstock...  I was just wondering whether anyone has had success with grafting them...   If so I wonder whether you could give us some pointers as to how and when to do it..
(I tried a couple of times already unsuccessfully)...  One thing I know from the three or four varieties that I have is that the astringent ones do better than the non-astringent ones...  This really is only because they are less vulnerable to damage from squirrels...  I have found that I have to harvest them before they sweeten or the squirrels will get every last one..

or find some scionwood and someone to graft them for you, and turn a couple of those wild ones into bearers of large, seedless fruit.

Here's a great resource for Persimmons and other low maintenance fruit trees.

https://archive.org/details/TreeCrops-J.RussellSmith


If you want a larger hybrid US/Asian persimmon take a look at Rosseyanka.

Root stocks being local on these may be critical. I'm in FL, and I got a few of them from Edible Landscaping and 4 - 5 years later they're still tiny and not very happy.
Some other ones from Tree and Shrub Depot in GA have taken off like a rocket.

I mostly grow Asian persimmons, I've known about them longer and had seeds sooner. I love them but they go slowly here as I never water enough. American won't like that either, I suspect.
About ten years ago I bought some American persimmon seeds. I direct-seeded them at random around my yard and forgot all about them.
Two came up. I wondered what they were.
When they got a couple of feet tall, a few years later, I began to suspect their identity.
Regarding winter chill; this year they blossomed for the first time. I believe that indicates we have enough chill for them, here where the chill is in the 300 to 500 hours range,
Right now their fall color is spectacular out my window.
I'm hoping to taste fruit within the next couple of years. With only two trees I want to see whether I like the fruit before I topwork to a known variety.
Finding scionwood for American persimmon could be a challenge. It hasn't been easy to collect Asian scionwood.
You guys recommending the hybrid persimmons, do you like the taste better?

Grafted persimmons can produce fruit twice as big and seedless, as the native Diospyros virginiana; seedless, reportedly, because it's a cross between that species and the D. texensis species which has a different number of chromosomes. I consulted my neighbor from whom I got the scionwood; he says it comes from Edible Landscaping and they charge $2 apiece plus shipping for scions. The Asian persimmons might be interesting but I believe they're hardy to one 7 or 8 and I'm in 6. I have found good recipes for persimmon muffins, lemon-glazed bar cookies, and cake online.