Diospyros blancoi Seeds | Velvet Apple
LATIN NAME: Diospyros blancoi
COMMON NAME: Velvet Apple
Plant Profile
The fruit is a round berry, russet to brownish orange and covered in a dense velvety felt that gives the tree its English name. Inside, the flesh is soft and pale. Because Diospyros fruits carry tannins when unripe, the velvet apple is eaten only when fully soft, and the skin is normally peeled away.
The species is dioecious: a plant carries either male flowers or female ones, never both. A garden needs a female tree for fruit and a male nearby for pollen, and until a seedling flowers there is no way to tell which one you have. Growers who cannot wait plant two or three seedlings, or graft from a known-bearing tree.
The tree has been carried under two names for a long time. Diospyros discolor was long the standard, while Diospyros blancoi is now the name in general use, and the second commemorates Manuel Blanco, the Augustinian author of the great Philippine flora. Both names still appear on nursery lists.
The ripe flesh draws its colour from beta-carotene and related carotenoids, and its aroma from volatile esters and sugar-derived furanones and lactones of the family that also gives cooked caramel its note. Unripe fruit is dominated by proanthocyanidins, the tannins that make an unripe persimmon mouth-drying.
Science & Biotechnology
Diospyros is a genus defined as much by its chemistry as by its flowers. The heartwood, roots and bark carry naphthoquinones, and the group includes diospyrin, a dimeric naphthoquinone named for the genus, together with plumbagin and 7-methyljuglone. These compounds darken the timber as it ages and give the wood its resistance to rot, and they carry a pharmacological literature.
Uses & Benefits
In the Philippines it grows in lowland forest and on cultivated ground, in a hot, humid climate with a distinct dry season that pushes it into a flush of flowering. Its heartwood is dark and heavy and is sold, along with the wood of its relatives, as Philippine ebony, which is why the fruit is only one of the reasons the tree is cut.
Philippine growers eat the fruit fresh, chilled and peeled, and sometimes blend the flesh into desserts and drinks. The same tree, cut at maturity, yields a dense dark timber used for furniture, tool handles and small carvings. A fruit tree can be a cabinet wood as well.
Growing from Seed
Rinse the seeds thoroughly; the sugary flesh around them is the commonest cause of failure in a seed tray. Sow in a mix of two parts compost, one part coarse sand and one part perlite, laid on its side and covered to about twice its own thickness. Keep the tray warm, shaded from harsh sun and consistently moist.
Young velvet apples scorch in full midday sun, so give them bright filtered light at first. Water steadily but never let the mix sit wet, and move each seedling into its own deep pot as soon as it has two true leaves. Field planting is best done at the start of the wet season.
Keep the tree to a single clear trunk by removing low side shoots while it is young, then let the crown fill out. Feed with a balanced fertiliser through the growing season and mulch over the roots. The tree is tropical and will not take frost, so in cooler gardens it belongs in a large container under cover. You will not know the sex of your seedling until the first flowers open.
Soft scale and mealybug colonise the undersides of the glossy leaves and the young stems, and fruit flies sting ripening fruit, so pick the crop as it softens and clear fallen fruit from beneath the tree. Leaf spot appears in still, humid air, which is one more reason to keep the canopy open.
Our Take
If you already grow persimmons, this one is the warm-climate cousin worth a large pot. Compare the foliage with Japanese persimmon, whose leaves share the same glossy texture, and with the date plum, the hardiest of the trio. Ebony, the genus namesake, shows how far the family goes into timber.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Velvet Apple often pair it with these related subjects: