Persimmon trees flowering and fruiting age

Hello,
So I had planted a couple of persimmon trees last fall (American persimmons that’s supposed to be native of North America). They were about 5-6 feet tall when planted. It’s the end of summer and they haven’t bloomed. Since the flowers are what distinguish male vs female, I don’t know what gender they are. My question is, is it normal for them to not have flowered? How old would they be if they are that size and when will they start producing fruits?

it’s definitely normal for them to not try to fruit the first year in a new spot. are these seedlings or grafted cultivars? generally by that size or a bit bigger the cultivars start flowering (though there may be a couple years of flowers before fruit sets for good). seedlings can take a bit longer, but it shouldn’t be too far off. maybe a few extra years.

not sure if these are seedlings or grafted, got them from a native plants nursery, the only info i have is that these are "straight species".

probably seedlings, then.

I also planted a pair of american persimmons, a few years ago, one is stunted but the other is over 12 feet tall now but I've not seen either of them flower. My soil here doesn't have good drainage, and someone decided to park a dead car next to them and make a huge pile of fill dirt on the other side so their conditions are not great, but some of the wild persimmon trees in the park nearby are not all that much bigger than my big tree except they produce fruit. My guesstimate is the smallest wild tree I've seen with fruit is about 20 feet tall and spindly, but my approximation is based on me remembering looking up at a tree in the past and could be totally inaccurate. I think I planted them as wips/bareroot maybe around 2015? It's taking quite awhile.

American Persimmons flower early (May and June) and the flowers are unobtrusive.  Honestly I've never seen/noticed any flowers except for the one time I went looking at the right time of year.  Partly this is because the flowers aren't brightly colored and I don't have great color vision, though; your mileage may vary.

I know of some mature trees growing in shaded understory that have a nice umbrella shape and make lots of good fruit that's all within my (tall person) reach.  Which is to say, the trees can't be more than ten feet tall, tops.  

I don't have any sense of how long it takes persimmon seedlings to start making fruit.  I have half a dozen that I've planted over the last eight years that haven't done it yet.  But they all could be males! I won't know until I actually get  flowsers/fruit.  

All of mine so far have been stunted slow growers that are, at most, six feet tall right now.  My guess is that they don't make fruit until they reach a certain degree of establishment; whether this is age-related or has more to do with conditions and weather I don't know.  All I can suggest is to baby them.  A thick layer of mulch and lots of water during droughts is my best advice; these are a wetlands/riparian species where I am and seem much happier with damp roots than with dry ones.  

I do have one tree that's a volunteer near the edge of my orchard area.  That space was leased pasture until about 2005.  Fallow since then, it's now a dense regrowth forest.  The tree in question is as thick as my wrist, growing straight as an arrow, and climbing like mad in competition with the rest of the forest for light.  It's almost thirty feet tall with the lowest branches out of my reach.  Still no idea if it's male or female.  But if it's male, it's going to make an exquisitely fine piece of ebonywood timber for somebody after I am dead.

Hey Sid, any update?  Has your tree fruited yet?  I have been so patiently waited for my trees to gain size.  They were planted in '21, so will be in the ground for four years this summer and I am getting very eager!  Some are very small, one is probably eight feet tall and others have so many side shoots and suckers that I don't know which is the original.

Barbara Simoes wrote:Hey Sid, any update?  Has your tree fruited yet?  I have been so patiently waited for my trees to gain size.  They were planted in '21, so will be in the ground for four years this summer and I am getting very eager!  Some are very small, one is probably eight feet tall and others have so many side shoots and suckers that I don't know which is the original.

Barbara, most seedlings would take around 7 years to produce their first flowers. Some grafted varieties, like 100-46 for example, are known to be more precious and fruit within 2-3 years after planting at a much smaller size.

Also, based on data collected that I've seen, there tends to be approximately 70% males in a general group of seedlings. Female american persimmons typically produce fruit parthenocarpically (seedless without fertilization) so if you graft males to selected varieties you may get seedless fruit. Good luck and look for those flowers this spring!

Ryan, thank you.  All of mine are grafted.  I just can't get over the differences in size.  Some are less than two feet tall. (Meader and 100-46/Lehman's Delight)  The Prok and Yates had a tough start.  They are the ones which have lots of offshoots and I don't know which is the "central leader" or actual graft.  I have two out front: The Valeene Beauty, which was chomped its first winter and is eeking out an existence, (all have hardware cloth around them ever since that discovery) and another 100-46, which is the star, now over six feet tall with no offshoots.  They are all so different from one another--just like children!  I don't really know what I'm doing, but have watched and read everything I can get my hands on and am trying to assimilate it all.
I don't dare prune out too many shoots from the "Medusa" trees because I'm worried about cutting the grafted part...any advice?  Is it bad to let it go like that?  I wasn't expecting it to behave that way, and to be fair, none of the other four have.
The "Medusa" trees are in back in what I call the stump garden, because I had to have an ancient red maple cut that was six feet in diameter.  In order to make for easier mowing, I made a garden around the stump and the persimmons were planted in it to provide shade for the pool to the east.  I also have dwarf mulberries and some bush cherries along with rhubarb and herbs all encircled with hosta in that bed.  If there are so many offshoots, will that affect the total height much?  I have cut out those "branches" which I KNOW are not the originally grafted one.  There are probably about four or five now.  But that means that all but one will be of the original seedling stock, which I don't know what that was.

I found some wild persimmon trees, I saved some seeds and planted them with no luck.
However, I also gathered the fruit from the tree and made pie!

My seedling American persimmon took two years to come up from seed and about 12 years before fruiting, but every year since consistent and a good crop.

We planted a 2 yr old grafted Meader persimmon and it flowered and fruited 2 years later! It's only about 5 feet tall. The flowers are unusual but very pretty. Fruit are smaller than a walnut but delicious!

greg mosser wrote:it’s definitely normal for them to not try to fruit the first year in a new spot. are these seedlings or grafted cultivars? generally by that size or a bit bigger the cultivars start flowering (though there may be a couple years of flowers before fruit sets for good). seedlings can take a bit longer, but it shouldn’t be too far off. maybe a few extra years.

 
I've got two persimmons that fruit every year but they're too tall to get to. Can they be cut down to a certain height and sprout new branches lower?

Sean, I just googled it, and apparently it is...with limitations.  If you have American persimmons, you might just want to lay a tarp and shake the tree.  The fruit won't fall until it's ripe:

I've got two persimmons that fruit every year but they're too tall to get to. Can they be cut down to a certain height and sprout new branches lower?

"Native American persimmon." But there is Diospyros virginia--which grows wild around here, and prefers ridges--and apparently there is also a Texas species, and I've read that the reason the grafted trees bear much bigger, seedless or near seedless fruit is that the two species don't have the same number of chromosomes. I've wondered whether males are needed for the wild ones to fruit though--apparently not so maybe I should remove most of them. I don't know anything about the Texas species.
In my experience a tree flowers at something like 8 to 10 years--the cream-colored flowers are not hard to see, in early June here, but the gender difference is a bit subtle, The thing to do if they turn up male is to graft a female cultivar onto them, not the wild ones but a named variety that will yield bigger, seedless fruit. The wild ones, of the virginiana species anyway, are the size of golf balls and loaded with seeds. I've found no easier way to deseed them than to pick through them by hand, and I wind up with equal size piles of seeds (and what I call tails, and caps) and usable pulp. My two big wild trees often yield huge quantities of fruit...but the tradeoff is the deseeding, and the fact that I have to wait for the fruit to fall and then risk contamination from the ground (on the other hand, fallen fruit is ripe and what you pick may still be astringent). These two trees are growing in heavy clay with dubious drainage in one case...doesn't bother them.
I had a seedling in front of the house, that we ran over twice while building the house...I didn't remove it because it had an elegant shape, and recovered so well from being run over. When it flowered, it was male...so we grafted it, and it is now my most reliable tree, though still fairly small. It also shades my greenhouse some, which is not ideal--at least in spring--but it earns its place with its fruit. Maybe eventually it will get big enough that I can remove all the lower branches so it will shade only the roof of the greenhouse, which is solid anyway, tin, because of hickories dropping their hard nuts.

American persimmons are a different species than the one from Asia or the one from Texas/Mexico.  They grow in colder climes and have a more interesting, complex flavor, IMHO. They haven't been bred as much as the Asian species.   The 60 chromosome wild persimmons are from the deep South and the 90 chromosome ones are mostly from the Midwest.  Kentucky is kind of the border state on this one, too.  Both grow there.  All of the named varieties that you can buy from a nursery are 90 chromosome ones.  They won't pollinate each other. The grafted ones have a smaller number of seeds, they taste better, and they're larger.  I live in the PNW, and I've never had a tree grow too tall, although I have grown many American persimmons for more than a decade.  We don't have the heat all day and all night, even in the summer, so they don't grow as tall.  

The flowers are very small and you might not notice them unless you are specifically looking for them during the flowering part of the year.  It's usually May here, but that varies. If you look on a photography site, such as Google images, you can see the difference.  The male flowers are smaller, more plentiful, and packed close to each other.  The female flowers are the opposite.  Some varieties, like Early Golden, Garretson, and I think Killen, have mostly female flowers and some males.  I grow a variety called Szukis, which has mostly male flowers and some females.  Meader was popular years ago because it had both on the same tree, and it's very hardy.  It is the most widely known tree for breaking and being brittle.  

https://growingfruit.org/t/whos-growing-improved-american-persimmons-suggestions-welcome/54573

John S
PDX OR

I'm copying this response, John, to send my neighbor who will find it of interest. Thanks!

My wild trees may be fifty feet tall; one has had several hundred fruits on it some years. They don't bear well every year. The ones growing in woods have a long trunk with the top way up high, like a lollipop; the ones in my  clearing have touchable lowest branches. They have been in the clear for at least fifty years. Yes it's a very different climate; we get deeper cold in winter but more heat in summer. Moschata squash grow well, maximas don't, probably because of borers (we normally get rain evenly through the year). We don't have hot nights here--I'm at 1000'--but typical summer nights are in the 60s. I've noticed that most of the grafted trees are more rounded in shape, although there is one grafted 40 years ago that never sets all that many fruits, but they're all large--its crown is way up there. Several different cultivars are involved but I don't know who is which. I've wondered if the Asian-American hybrids would survive here and bear well. Do they have seeds?

Apparently, most of the really tall trees are of the 60 chromosome type, mostly from the deep South. WV may be like Kentucky and have some of both.  The 90 chromosome ones you can buy grafted at a nursery will almost all be really normal sized trees for your yard-10 to 20 feet tall at maturity.  That works well for me.  We had storms last month and many  100 foot tall trees fell on houses and across streets, crushing the houses and fences and blocking the streets. Not for me.
John S
PDX OR

Kathy Gray wrote:I found some wild persimmon trees, I saved some seeds and planted them with no luck.
However, I also gathered the fruit from the tree and made pie!

A request - if people could give where they are /
planting zone I would be most grateful! As a fourth year homesteader (western NC, new zone 8b) I’m still learning what will or will not grow here. And I LOVE persimmons & would love to plant some trees!
Thanks Permies!
♥️

(oops, duplicate)

Gaurī Rasp wrote:

Kathy Gray wrote:I found some wild persimmon trees, I saved some seeds and planted them with no luck.
However, I also gathered the fruit from the tree and made pie!

A request - if people could give where they are /
planting zone I would be most grateful! As a fourth year homesteader (western NC, new zone 8b) I’m still learning what will or will not grow here. And I LOVE persimmons & would love to plant some trees!
Thanks Permies!
♥️

Western NC is just about in the very center of the native range of D. virginiana, so you should have no trouble growing it:


But I wonder if you might be in eastern NC (which is newly 8b) or western NC (7b with some 8a)? Either way, persimmons might already be growing on your land.

Thanks Winn!
Yes we’re Western NC, about 30 minutes southeast of Asheville near Lake Lure.
We’ve got 5 acres w fabulous soil so I’ll be on the lookout for persimmon trees!

I live in West Virginia (which I do have posted next to my name, because I agree, I often want to know that to put a post in context). Here, persimmons prefer to grow on ridges, so if you are in the bottom you might not have any wild ones. But a transplanted one would likely thrive. As for germinating seeds, perhaps they need cold scarification. When I separate the seeds (and caps and tails--that little thing sticking out the blossom end) I've learned not to throw the wad in my compost, because persimmons are very difficult to eradicate--they send down taproots which often angle off to the side. So you need to transplant them very young.

Ozark area, NW Arkansas


We have been blessed with several wild persimmon trees on our property (1800' elev) in rocky, clay heavy soil. I love to wander the field, gathering the fallen fruit, eating out of hand the softest/sweetest fruit. My goats and dogs follow me, eating what they find, if I'm not quick enough. I've saved the pulp from my last harvest in my freezer, but have yet to find a recipe I like to use it up. Suggestions?
I have no idea what variety they are, chromosome count, but they are delicious!

Zeo, I was hoping to freeze the pulp as well.  I was assuming that when it thawed out, it would be like eating the fresh fruit, so my plan was to do just that.  I wanted to have it as my dessert throughout the winter, sort of like I do with applesauce.  Does that idea not work?  Thanks.

Barbara, I freeze persimmon pulp after extracting the seeds; I cook with it mostly rather than eating it raw, but that's partly due to digestive issues--not wanting to risk contamination of ones I pick off the ground. My neighbor freezes whole fruits, he just picks off the cap and tail and puts them in a bag in the freezer. These are grafted, large seedless ones. He likes to smash a persimmon between bread with peanut butter.

Oh, this gives me hope!  I can't wait to taste the fruit.  I drove an hour to the UVM campus to try persimmons before planting them.  The more I read about them, the more intrigued I became, but they have been much slower growing than I expected.  I have a Meader that I put in last year (?) and it's about knee high...It'll be a while, I'm thinking, but I have others that did put on some good growth last year.  They all just seem to have to think about it first!

Sunny Baba wrote:We planted a 2 yr old grafted Meader persimmon and it flowered and fruited 2 years later! It's only about 5 feet tall. The flowers are unusual but very pretty. Fruit are smaller than a walnut but delicious!

Yes, I just went to the profile that has my name next to it.  Click on it and choose "edit profile."  Choose your profile and signature.  Under that category, it lists location at the bottom.  Don't forget to save changes.

Winn Sawyer wrote:

Gaurī Rasp wrote:

Kathy Gray wrote:I found some wild persimmon trees, I saved some seeds and planted them with no luck.
However, I also gathered the fruit from the tree and made pie!

A request - if people could give where they are /
planting zone I would be most grateful! As a fourth year homesteader (western NC, new zone 8b) I’m still learning what will or will not grow here. And I LOVE persimmons & would love to plant some trees!
Thanks Permies!
♥️

Western NC is just about in the very center of the native range of D. virginiana, so you should have no trouble growing it:

But I wonder if you might be in eastern NC (which is newly 8b) or western NC (7b with some 8a)? Either way, persimmons might already be growing on your land.