EBONY FAMILY 
cymes ; the pedicels downy and bearing two minute bracts. Pistil- 
late flowers solitary, usually on separate trees, their pedicels short, 
recurved, and bearing two bractlets. 
Calyx.—Usually four-lobed, accrescent under the fruit. 
Corolla.—Greenish yellow or creamy white, tubular, four-lobed ; 
lobes imbricate in bud. 
Stamens.—Sixteen, inserted on the corolla, in staminate flowers in 
two rows. Filaments short, slender, slightly hairy ; anthers oblong, 
introrse, two-celled, cells opening longitudinally. In pistillate flowers 
the stamens are eight with aborted anthers, rarely these stamens are 
perfect. 
Pistil.—Ovary superior, conical, ultimately eight-celled ; styles 
four, slender, spreading ; stigma two-lobed. 
Frutt.—A juicy berry containing one to eight seeds, crowned with 
the remnants of the style and seated in the enlarged calyx ; depressed- 
globular, pale orange color, often red-cheeked ; with slight bloom, 
turning yellowish brown after freezing. Flesh astringent while green, 
sweet and luscious when ripe. 
They havea plumb which they call pessemmins, like to a medler, in England, 
but of a deeper tawnie cullour; they grow on a most high tree. When they are 
not fully ripe, they are harsh and choakie, and furre in a man’s mouth hke allam, 
howbeit, being taken fully ripe, yt is a reasonable pleasant fruict, somewhat 
lushious. I have seene our people put them into their baked and sodden pud- 
dings; there be whose tast allows them to be as pretious as the English apri- 
cock ; I confess it is a good kind of horse plumb. 
—' The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittania.” 
The longest pole takes the Persimmon.—SournERN PROVERB. 
The Persimmon is one of the most interesting of our na- 
tive trees. Its habitat is southern, it appears along the coast 
from New York to Florida; west of the Alleghanies it is 
found in southern Ohio and along through southeastern 
Iowa and southern Missouri; when it reaches Louisiana, 
eastern Kansas and the Indian Territory it becomes a 
mighty tree, one hundred and fifteen feet high. It can be 
grown in northern Ohio only by the greatest care, and in 
southern Ohio its fruit is never edible until after frost. 
The peculiar characteristics of its fruit have made the tree 
well known. This fruit is a globular berry, from an inch to 
an inch and a half in diameter, varying as to seeds, some- 
times with eight and sometimes without any. It bears at its 
apex the remnants of the styles and sits in the enlarged and 
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