16 EDWARD W. BERRY 



The species of Diospyros and indeed the entire family to which 

 it belongs are, for the most part, confined to tropical and subtropi- 

 cal countries. The different species of persimmon or ebony are 

 widely distributed and indigenous to all of the continents. At 

 first sight, it seems singular that a tree whose near relatives are all 

 tropical should be found ranging from Florida and Texas, north- 

 ward to southern New England and to Iowa and Kansas in the 

 West. It is clear that present climatic conditions altogether fail 

 to explain such a range. Nor is it to be accounted for by the sup- 

 position that the persimmon has extended its range northward 

 from the tropics during the few thousands of years which have 

 intervened since the last glacial epoch. Like so many of our other 

 American trees, the real explanation is to be sought in the records 

 which are far older than those of post-glacial times. Fortunately 

 the persimmon has left many such records of its former distribu- 

 tion extending back some millions of years previous to the advent 

 of man on this earth. 



In that grand display of dicotyledonous genera which during 

 the mid-Cretaceous replaced the old Mesozoic flora of ferns, cycad>, 

 and conifers and which appeared with such apparent suddenness 

 at a number of points in the northern hemisphere, we find unmis- 

 takable evidence of the abundance and wide distribution of species 

 of Diospyros. No less than fourteen different forms have been 

 described from the rocks of this age, and the localities where they 

 have been found are scattered from Australia to Bohemia, Green- 

 land, and Vancouver Island. A large majority of these species 

 are American, and they seem to have been especially at home along 

 the Cretaceous coast of the Atlantic and along the border of the 

 mediterranean sea which extended northwestward from the Gulf 

 of Mexico over much of our present Great Plains area. One of 

 these species, well named Diospyros primaeva by Professor Heer 

 in 1866, is especially widespread and abundant, being found not 

 only in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska in the west but also from 

 Texas eastward through Alabama and northward in South Caro- 

 lina, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, Long Island and 

 Greenland, or, from latitude 33° to latitude 71° north. That 

 these early persimmons were not very different from those of 



