is this gross? Gathering persimmon pits in animal poop?

We love wild persimmons and have always had them growing nearby for a regular fall harvest until we moved to this small rural community.

We see a few trees on our hikes and the fruit is eaten as quickly as it falls by the local wildlife....BUT...we also see seeds in piles of poop along some of the trails

I want to figure out a way to pick it up safely, without touching, bring it home and plant...is this gross, stupid and not safe?  Or just helping along a natural process?

I assume it's mostly coyote poop or maybe someones big dog judging from poop size although lot's of critters love persimmons.

sure, it’s gross! so bring gloves and/or plastic bags!

Yeah, sort of a rhetorical question I know...

I have put some thought into this and I do plan to be ready next hike but want to limit the stuff it takes to accomplish...like have a lidded jar with some soil in it along and a piece of heavy cardboard for a scoop? Go home and plant immediately and then the jar can sit outdoors for a long while and later go to recycling.

Some of my hesitation until now has been fear of grossing out others on the hike (husband and grandson)...so I' m looking at a quick smooth pickup unnoticed by them...stealth  

People with dogs carry poop in a bag all the time in permies. It's fairly normal these days, lol!

Jordan Holland wrote:People with dogs carry poop in a bag all the time in permies. It's fairly normal these days, lol!

I hadn't thought about that but they do don't they!
So what's a little coyote poo once a year compared to daily pickups

The poop is extra good stuff for the baby tree and full of microbes to give it a boost. The animal's digestive process probably washed away germination inhibitors on the seed-coat. It's all up-side.

Christopher Weeks wrote:The poop is extra good stuff for the baby tree and full of microbes to give it a boost. The animal's digestive process probably washed away germination inhibitors on the seed-coat. It's all up-side.

Came here to say this. There is a reason wild plants wrap their seeds in tasty fruit. It is advantageous for the seeds to be eaten and dispersed by animals. They have literally evolved to make themselves as tasty (for the correct species!) as possible.

Check out the local stores that sell pet stuff.

I buy dog pooper scoopers and cat litter scoopers which would easily pick up that kind of poop.

Those pet stores also sell plastic bags that have handles that tie the bags closed.

Once I got home, I would just dig a hole, open the bag and drop the poop into the hole.  I would water frequently and watch for a persimmon tree to come up.  This technique might take a little longer because the seeds have not been stratified.

Michael Cox wrote:There is a reason wild plants wrap their seeds in tasty fruit. It is advantageous for the seeds to be eaten and dispersed by animals. They have literally evolved to make themselves as tasty (for the correct species!) as possible.

And birds. Birds eat our wild huckleberry fruit and conveniently poop it out while sitting on stumps. Almost every Huckleberry plant you see on our property is growing out of a stump. Nature cooperates more than we sometimes appreciate.

So yes, Judith, go ahead and be discrete if it makes you feel better, but also go for it - help Mother Nature put those seeds in a place that will nurture and grow a seedling and where humans and wildlife can enjoy the results.

The exact way I would do it: 1) take a small, thin cotton rag and a small plastic bag  (bread-bag sort of size), 2) drop the cotton over the poop, 3) with your hand in the bag, carefully pick up the poop, 4) turn the bag inside out so it's no longer over your hand, but is now over the poop, 5) twist closed the bag.  I'd use a small cardboard box rather than a glass jar to carry it home, as I don't like taking glass into the woods.

When you get home, slide the rag out of the bag into your planting hole and let it decompose along with the poop.

i think just burying the ‘load’ would be enough. you’ll be looking for germination in the spring, they’ll have stratified by then.

To answer the original question, no.
THIS is gross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

Haha! Jordan

Thanks everyone!
This discussion is just what I needed.

I carry a small a backpack and I think I can easily fit in a couple extra things for this.
We don't buy ziplocks but somehow end up with a few around anyway .

...or a persimmon seed.

Jordan Holland wrote:THIS is gross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

To me the grossest part of it is that since humans decided they could make some money doing this, they treat the animals like shit.

Got some!
Probably the same pile I saw last week...had been rained on then baked in the sun so dry and no smell...plastic bag and a bit of cardboard worked...then double bagged in my pack....there were a lot of seeds.. 2-3 dozen maybe?

I planted in pots this morning in a mix of sharp sand, good chicken manure compost and well weathered pine chips in the bottom of the pots.
Will leave out over the winter and watch for early sprouts so I can transplant quickly since I've always heard they do not transplant well.
We were not settled on where to plant them in the ground...maybe by the next ones the holes will be ready.

And even though I didn't touch anything I washed and washed my hands

Now back to cooking for this weekends birthday party!

"pre-fertilized"
"pre-processed"
half the work's already done!!!
hope they all come up.

Thinking positive thoughts their direction - hatch babies hatch! Ok, I suppose I should be thing "germinate, germinate", but that seems too long a word for little seeds!

What will you do if they *all* germinate?

I've heard good things about persimmons, but I don't think they'll grow in my ecosystem. They certainly don't grow wild here.

Jay Angler wrote:

What will you do if they *all* germinate?

This sounds like the start of a great problem, to me. I opted to grow most of my annual landraces in clumps this year. Looking at corn specifically, it meant that the plants that thrived and made nice cobs were the ones that had the genetics, epigenetics, and microbiome to thrive in spite of the competition, and in spite of whatever the soil conditions were in that particular spot, and were able to survive any predation or other problems that might have impacted them. The plants that weren't suitable either died, didn't produce, or produced cobs that were obviously inferior and excluded from seed saving. I don't think I'll ever not grow things in clumps, so long as I have sufficient seed to do so.

This is how nature does selection. That's how they would have grown if left where they were found.

The ones that aren't tough enough will die. Thin out any remaining and unsuitable candidates. And then hopefully you'll still be left with a few specimens once they reach bearing age and can select for flavor or whatever other traits are important in the fruit. I would say shelf-life, but that's a questionable thing to select for in native persimmons. 😂

This is a link to a thread about persimmons that I started years ago...We miss those trees.
https://permies.com/t/17089/american-persimmon-drought-resistant-delicious

i think you have the info you need. but to avoid transplant maybe you can bring along pots made of newspaper, filled with a bit of dirt, that you can load and then plant directly?  

bottom line just do that shyt!

Jordan Holland wrote:To answer the original question, no.
THIS is gross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

How bad do you need your morning cup?  

Cat Knight wrote:
How bad do you need your morning cup?  

"The best part of waking up...is civet poo in yooouuur cup!"

I see the civet coffee reference and raise it one level further: The native peoples of Sonora and Baja California would camp in places where the pitahaya and cardon cactus fruit were ripe and feast on them while the harvest was good. They would all poop in a designated location, and return to the campsite months later during the dry season, crush and winnow the dessicated dung to glean the big seeds with their high protein and fat content. From accounts of the practice, they were meticulous about washing the seeds, and only ate them after cooking.

This was euphemistically called the "second harvest" and horrified the 18th-century Spanish missionaries even more than the habit of getting down on all fours to "graze" amaranth and purslane seedlings that emerged after the first good rains in summer. (Both of these accounts from G. P. Nabhan's 1985 book Gathering the Desert.)

Harvesting seeds to eat from fully-decomposed-and-no-longer-smelly-or-pathogenic poop sounds perfectly fine to me.  As long as you wash the seeds well, and cook completely to kill any leftover germs that might linger, who cares?  Sounds clever.  It's only when dung is actually part of the desired food that my eyebrows go up.

Shit...seriously?  Many seeds NEED some sort of treatment in order for them to germinate, such as cold, or going through the digestive system of an animal that eats it and later poops it out.

I would take a plastic bag, stick my hand in it, grab the whole pile, put it in a pot with some potting soil, cover with more potting soil, label it, grow it, see what happens.

Yeah, wash your hands after you pick it up, to reduce the chance of transmission of fecal bacteria that might make you sick, if that makes you feel better.

Putting the whole pile in there with the seed means you'll have free fertilizer and maybe even microbiology.  You know, the same stuff people BUY in bags, labelled "steer manure," "chicken manure," "guano," and, sadly (because it contains heavy metals and residue of pesticides and harmaceutical drugs), sewage sludge (often labeled misleadingly as "biosolids" or something innocuous and environmentally-friendly sounding...aka human manure and urine remains that the corporations and governments do not want to have to pay more for, to process so that they are safe; instead they just hide them and make money off the ignorance of the people.

That pile of poop was likely the least contaminated, healthiest kind of fertilizer you could get, full of a biodiversity of input and microbiology that people tramp into the woods to dig up and bring back to their struggling gardens!  And that seed maybe not treated with pesti-, fungi-, insecti-, any-cides, so likely to be strong and healthy genetics that can withstand all sorts of erratic weather and environmental conditions.  (at least, that's how I'd view it)

And to the argument that those microbes might be "anerobic," and therefore "bad for you," how would you know this?  Unless you're doing microscopy AND can correctly identify AND know everything about every microbe that exists, you don't know that.

(I've heard from soil scientists that we know MAYBE 1% of all the microbiology out there.)

How does anyone know for sure that anaerobic microbes do not change to aerobic microbes under different circumstances?

Many reptiles change the gender of the offspring depending on temperature the eggs are in.  Some animals, including cockroaches, I just discovered, don't need to sexually reproduce; they can create babies all by themselves.

Humans are such brainwashed, anthropomorphic creatures, that we think we know so much, and that Nature is so stupid.  Yet we know only a tiny fraction about how anything in Nature actually works.

Show me one thing Nature made, that does not have the capacity to self heal.  Show me one thing humans have made that does.

One of my neighbors refuses to let me associate with him or his children, because I offered his daughter a tomato fresh from my plant, without washing it.  He likely thought I would poison her, never once giving a second thought to the bottle of crap he sprays on the "weeds" coming through the cracks of his sterile, concrete front "yard."

Nice future life for your kids, mister.  I wasted a delicious tomato on them!  hahahaha

Okay, yeah...maybe I have some unresolved issues to deal with.  hahahaha

I just wanted to add, if, in ten (?) years, when you get fruit and don't like it, remember you can always top-graft for traits you do want.  Trees started from seed are often much stronger, although the fruit may be inferior.

And what is the reason you are not using true permaculture principles, turning the problem into a solution?

This is the perfect way to get grandson involved in his own food production and learning processes.

Examples:
Under which conditions will the seeds grow better--with or without the added manure?
Microscopy--what kinds of microbes are we finding in the pile, and can we identify them?
What are their known roles in the soil ecosystem?
Does what we do make a difference in their numbers?

Experiment--add seeds to pots with similar potting mixes.  Change parameters for each pot, label, and record results
Ex:  throw seeds in the freezer or fridge for X number of days, then plant
put in boiling water, then plant
peel off outer seed coating, then plant
soak in weed tea, then plant
add eggshells, coffee grounds, grass clippings to one pot but not the others
etc

Help grandson learn to identify trees and fruits, learn to plant trees and seeds, mix potting mix, make weed tea or compost tea and apply it.  Make newspaper pots, and plant in them.

Have grandson keep his sharp eyes out for other piles of poop with seeds.  Explore and observe, to see if you can identify which fruits the seeds may be from.

I cannot image a kid that wouldn't remember, long after you're gone, that he and grandma spent this wonderful, free, quality time together, learning, playing, and yeah, doing gross stuff  (kids LOVE gross stuff, and they are discouraged at every turn.  What a treasure you'd be, to nurture that (safely, duh--don't be eating that crap!)

I assume he may one day inherit the property where you plan to plant the persimmon trees.  People who get involved are more likely to nurture and protect.  We need more of that in this disconnected, toxic, planet in danger.  He'll end up a better steward of our beautiful planet if he's taught (by you--who else?) to question, explore, learn, discover, experiment, fail, and progress.

And to work with Nature and see what happens without human interference.  Just asking that forever annoying question will work...Why?  

Observe = another permaculture principle

(And, like I tell everyone I know with young grandkids--take every advantage you can to enjoy your time together.  They go from being cute, to rolling their eyes and not wanting to be around you, in about ten years...and that FLIES by!  Enjoy every minute that you can!)

...wish I could grow persimmon here...

Hahaha...well said Alina!

I've spent decades explaining about and nuturing plants and teaching and nurturing children...at the moment I just want to do what I want to do without feeling a need to defend, justify or even teach...having just turned 73 my perspective has changed somewhat.

I realize it was a teaching moment but my energy level for that was low and I prefered to take a lazy approach.

I guess I never mentioned the dog who hikes with us and points out every pile of poop on the trail? And that wonderful woodsy outdoorsman grandson is 22?
And this 'harvest' didn't gross me out at all...that rarely happens.  My only concern was the comfort of others.

Your enthusiasm and thoughts are well appreciated

This just in. Either the most famous youtuber is misinformed (a distinct possibility) or they are using elephants in addition to civets. https://youtube.com/shorts/jGAJCAuV3pQ?si=Y4LOMMZ9rWFYAefH

My (dog?) poop seed persimmons are sprouting!
And so are the ones from a friends potluck...fresh from the persimmon spit into a cup.

First photo are the ones gathered in poop.
Second photo from fresh seed.

The fresh seed is popping up like crazy.

It's a race!

I need to decide where to plant them soon...two separate 'groves'.

I have no way of telling male from female until bloom so I'll plant lots and thin later.

Got them all in the ground during this super rainy weather we're having.
I planted seven holes of them with 2-3 trees each in two separate areas in order to keep the 'Buffalo River poop persimmon orchard' separate from the 'friends memorial /party/potluck pits spit in a cup after eatting orchard'.

I only remembered to get a shot of the full plant when I planted the party pit persimmon sprouts just now.  The others were similar but shorter tap root only because I planted them a week ago.  I tried to be gentle with the taproot...time will tell.

Germination was good for both but better for the potluck pits.

Next time...I'll dig the holes and plant pits in place and thin them.

Still, maybe we'll have signs of fruit in a few years?

Congratulations, baby Poopsimmon!