SOME ANCESTORS OF THE PERSIMMON 21 



their ancestral history and the geologic, geographic, and climatic 

 history of the earth. 



I have attempted to summarize the history of Diospyros in a 

 graphic way on the accompanying small sketch map of the world 

 (fig. 7) . The solid black indicates the distributional areas of the 

 existing species while the ruled lines indicate the larger areas over 

 which Diospyros extended its range during its geological history. 

 This range was probably more extensive even than is indicated 

 since data are not available for plotting the complete record which 

 will always remain more or less incomplete. 



