Hume: Planting Persimmons 



135 



FRUIT OF TAMOPAN VARIETY, ACTUAL SIZE. 



This is one of tlie most valuable varieties in China, where it is practically seedless. It is 

 propagated on a large scale by native horticulturists and sold more commonly than any 

 other in some of the most important markets. In the United States it seems never to 

 produce anv staminate flowers, but, on the other hand, it seems not to require pollination 

 for successful fruiting. It has not been widely enough tested to determine its behavior with 

 ■ certainty. (Figure 18.) 



every pistillate flower on D. Kaki trees 

 will set fruit even though there is an 

 abundance of pollen nearby. Pistillate 

 flowers are produced singly in the leaf 

 axils near the base of the twigs of the 

 current season's growth. There may 

 be anywhere from two or three to eight 

 or ten flowers in the lower nodes of a 

 new shoot, and if every one of these 

 flowers produced fruit, the trees wotild 

 be very much overloaded. Fortimately 

 this does not occur, however, and trees 



which are heavily fruited do not set more 

 than one frtiit for every six or eight 

 flowers on an average. In very much 

 overloaded trees, the number sometimes 

 runs as high as one in three or four. 

 This percentage is too great in some 

 cases and it would be better to remove 

 a considerable portion of the fruit to 

 increase the size and quality of that 

 which is allowed to remain. The per- 

 centage of flowers which produce fruit 

 under proper conditions is higher than 



