Diospyros virginiana Seeds | American Persimmon
LATIN NAME: Diospyros virginiana
COMMON NAME: American Persimmon, Common Persimmon
Plant Profile
The genus Diospyros is the home of ebony, and the American member, while not black, shares the family hardness. The heartwood is dark brown to nearly black at the centre of old trunks, extremely dense and close-grained, and it was worked into golf club heads, shuttles, turning and tool handles until synthetic materials took over. A tree grown for fruit will never produce a log of that quality, but the wood is a reminder that the persimmon is a timber tree that happens to make dessert.
Each fruit carries a four-lobed calyx that persists after the fruit ripens and falls, and the shape of that calyx is a reliable guide to the variety. The fruit itself holds a variable number of seeds, from none to eight, and the seeds are flat, dark and sealed inside a pulp that stains the fingers. Trees with large fruit and few seeds are the ones worth grafting, which is exactly how the named cultivars came about.
A persimmon grown from seed is a lottery, and it also carries a deep taproot that makes transplanting a mature tree a hopeless task. The standard answer is to raise seedlings of the species for one or two seasons and then graft a selected scion onto them, using a whip or a cleft graft made in late winter while both parts are dormant. The union is slow to callus, so the work must be done cleanly and the graft kept from drying out. Grafted trees come into bearing much earlier than seedlings, and if the rootstock throws suckers, those must be pulled rather than cut, or they will dominate the tree.
In the American South the ripe fruit was for generations the basis of a baked pudding, mixed with a batter and spices and steamed until set, and it was fermented into a country beer in the same way as other soft fruit. The seeds had a second life: roasted and ground, they were used as a substitute for coffee when the real article was unavailable, a practice that spread during the shortages of the nineteenth century. Pulp that is strained and frozen keeps well, and the flesh also makes a good jam, though it needs a little lemon to sharpen it.
Science & Biotechnology
The tree is usually dioecious, so a single planted specimen may carry only male flowers and never set fruit. Male flowers come in small clusters, female flowers singly and larger, both greenish and easily overlooked in late spring. The bark is the most recognisable feature in winter: dark grey, deeply cut into square blocks that look almost like alligator hide, and so rich in tannins that it was once a commercial tanning material. The leaves are oval, glossy, and turn yellow, orange and purple in autumn before falling.
The American persimmon carries a tetraploid set of chromosomes while the Asian kaki is hexaploid, and that difference in ploidy level is the main reason the two do not combine easily as parents. Breeders have nevertheless produced hybrids, and named crosses exist that carry the cold hardiness of the American species into fruit of kaki size and quality, of which the well-known Nikita hybrid group is the example most often quoted. Working in the other direction, American persimmon seedlings have long served as rootstocks, and selecting a strain that produces few root suckers is a recurring practical problem for nurseries.
The astringency of the unripe fruit comes from soluble proanthocyanidins, complex polymers built from catechin and epicatechin units, stored in specialised cells through the flesh. As the fruit respires and softens, those polymers grow longer and settle out of solution, and the mouth-drying effect vanishes almost entirely. Growers use the difference as a tool: a fruit that is still astringent has not finished its work, and a fruit that has lost the pucker is ready. Varieties differ in how early that point arrives, and the older named sorts, including the early ripening sorts selected in the Midwest a century ago, were chosen above all for it.
Uses & Benefits
Anyone who has bitten an unripe American persimmon remembers the sensation: the mouth dries, the tongue seems to seize, and the fruit tastes of nothing but fur. Come back after a hard frost and the same orange globe is honey-sweet and soft enough to eat with a spoon. The change is not a ripening of sugar alone. It is the collapse of soluble tannins into insoluble polymers as the fruit tissues break down, so that the tannin molecules can no longer bind the proteins of the mouth. The peculiar consequence is a fruit crop that is best picked from the ground after the first cold nights rather than from the tree.
Growing from Seed
Persimmon seed is best sown fresh in the autumn, either directly into a deep pot or into a nursery bed, and left to take the winter cold. Clean the pulp off the seed first, because it moulds readily in a closed container, and sow the seed about its own depth in a free-draining mix. The seedling pushes a long taproot down before anything shows above the surface, which is why a deep pot or a direct sowing beats a shallow seed tray. Water the first season through dry spells and keep the ground clear of weeds, and transplant while the seedling is still small, ideally after one season.
A persimmon held in a small pot for more than a season coils its taproot and then sulks for years after planting. If a container is unavoidable, use a deep one and pot the seedling on before the roots reach the base. Ground that has been deeply dug and enriched with compost gives the tree the start it needs, and young trees benefit from a clear circle around the trunk.
Our Take
Grow more than one tree, or at least know the sex of what you are planting, because a lone male persimmon is a fine shade tree and a poor orchard. I pick from the ground after the first heavy frost and freeze the strained pulp flat in bags. The Asian relatives are quite different in temperament and are covered on our pages on the Japanese persimmon and the date plum, while a native companion that ripens at the
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