Adelaide de Meml 
The American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) 
sweet and luscious, and taste like 
dates. Indeed, one of their vernacular 
names is date plum. They are won- 
derful fruits. 
Early settlers realized this almost 
immediately upon their arrival in 
America. DeSoto wrote the first de- 
scription of the persimmon in 1539 
in Florida. The name itself apparently 
derives from the Algonquin putcha- 
min or pasiminan, meaning “dried 
fruit.” Well into the colonial era (and 
perhaps still) dried persimmons were 
stored and eaten like figs. Colonists 
must also have learned from Indians 
that the little fruit lent itself to baking 
in breads, cakes, and puddings. And 
we can be sure the Pilgrims had the 
good sense to consume persimmons 
out of hand, knowing from bitter ex- 
perience that they had to wait for 
this treat until the natural ripening 
process had masked the fruit’s tannin 
and made it sweet. As Capt. John 
Smith put it: “If it not be ripe, it 
will drawe a man’s mouth awrie with 
much torment; but when it is ripe, 
it is as delicious as an Apricock.” 
Easily grown from seed, the per- 
simmon was established in English 
gardens before 1629 and was intro- 
duced into Europe in the early eigh- 
teenth century, where it can still be 
found, but sun-starved American per- 
simmons in the Old World rarely 
reach a height of more than thirty 
feet. On native ground, persimmons 
do much better, normally topping out 
at something under fifty feet. 
D. virginiana is a member of the 
Ebenaceae family, but unlike almost 
all the other ebonies, it is not tropical. 
Its range extends across the United 
States from Florida and Texas into 
New England. Particularly valued for 
its timber, this hardwood has been 
characteristically employed for shoe 
lasts, weaver’s shuttles, and golf club 
heads. The dark heartwood takes a 
century to develop, but then it sur- 
passes in hardness any native wood 
except ironwood and dogwood. 
Small flowers bloom in early June 
and typically evolve into ripe fruit by 
October. Contrary to persistent folk- 
lore, frost has nothing to do with the 
ripening process. Indeed, the notion 
that a hard frost was required before 
the fruit would lose its tannic, mouth- 
puckering astringency has probably 
kept the native persimmon from 
achieving popularity as a commercial 
fruit. Everyone I met in Indiana told 
me that frost was essential, and that 
I should only attempt to eat fruit that 
had fallen on the ground. Unimpeach- 
able botanical authority asserts that 
this is false, that fruit with a good, 
dark orange color should be picked 
while still solid (cut rather than pulled 
from the stem), and that it can be 
ripened fully, until it is very soft, off 
the tree. I tested this proposition with 
several firm fruits, and it is so. Fur- 
thermore, ripening can be hastened 
along by bagging persimmons together 
with an apple. 
In other words, there is no reason 
to wait until persimmons have fallen 
to the ground from their own heaviness 
and gone smash. A commercial grower 
could easily harvest a crop while it 
was still firm enough to travel and 
get it to market in good shape. Off- 
tree ripening, by the evidence of my 
own experiment, produces just as fla- 
vorful a fruit as the benign neglect 
preached by tradition. 
Other factors besides the frost leg- 
end have also worked against popular 
acceptance of the persimmon. The 
fruit is small. Most varieties have sev- 
eral seeds. Indeed, the seeds are such 
a prominent feature of the fruit that 
a woman in Bloomington, Indiana, told 
me there was a local tradition of using 
them to divine the severity of the ap- 
proaching winter. 
Seeds, tannin, and frost legend not- 
withstanding, it has been obvious to 
everyone who ever tried a ripe per- 
simmon that it was a fruit of enormous 
appeal and sophistication worth com- 
mercial exploitation. At the end of 
the nineteenth century and the be- 
ginning of the twentieth, nurserymen 
developed various cultivated varieties: 
some early blooming, one virtually 
seedless. But a market never mate- 
rialized. City people didn’t want na- 
tive persimmons. But the cultivars are 
still available. 
Those interested in planting a per- 
simmon tree should write Gerardi 
Nursery, Route 1, O’Fallon, Illinois 
62269 or California Nursery Com- 
pany, Box 2278, Fremont, California 
94336 or Waynesboro Nurseries, 
Waynesboro, West Virginia 22980. Do 
not try to transplant a wild tree with- 
out professional assistance, as the ex- 
tremely deep taproot makes this a very 
dicey project. I met a man in Brown 
County who had failed on several tries. 
He at least had several other trees 
that bore fruit almost at his doorstep. 
And almost no one was competing with 
him for their bounty. 
Only the initiated seem to bother 
with wild persimmons, which are ei- 
ther out of reach, overly tannic, or 
lying squashed or unappealingly flac- 
cid on the ground. I was able to glean 
another shirtful at the edge of a rec- 
reational vehicle parking lot in Brown 
County State Park. Vacationers sitting 
on vinyl folding chairs eyed me with 
disdain as I gathered persimmons 
from a nearby grassy knoll littered 
with fruit and the paper debris of hu- 
man tourism. 
Some of those same rusticating ur- 
banites must have driven home and 
found bigger but not nearly as inter- 
esting heart-shaped oriental persim- 
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