I’m no expert but these look like male flowers.
Most likely, a named (female) variety was grafted to male seedling rootstock, which is perfectly acceptable practice, but then the graft failed and the male seedling grew out. You bought the male tree, labeled Yates (or whatever).
Sad, but thanks for explaining.
@mbahde … graft it over to the variety or varieties you want.
You can get a lot of persimmon scion here on the fruit board over winter.
TNHunter
Well I bought the scion from Cliff England. It was quality stuff. I grafted it, but then I left for a 4 day rafting trip in the desert. No water for 4 days in a hot spring. Sadly, it appears that none of the grafts took. It was a great rafting trip though.
However, I have been checking and I have a lot of fruit! I am growing Yates, Early Golden, H-118 and Garretson. Many of them are descendants of the varieties that sometimes produce male flowers at times. Maybe the rafting trip was more important than the new varieties.
John S
PDX OR
Had a question:
What’s the purpose of having seedless fruit via parthenocarpy?
Would it not make evolutionary sense to have a tree that always makes male+female flowers on same tree (or perfect flowers), so that you get max amount of chances to make seeded fruit for animals to spread? Otherwise you are just hoping you get a male and female tree get their seeds dropped relatively nearby each other (and if that doesn’t happen then it makes 0 seeds vs an established male+female flowering tree that can make thousands of seeds to spread per season).
If you had a variety that has both flowers (that a few varieties seem to do), would it guarantee to spread much more ? Yet we are dominated by varieties that don’t need males around to fruit.
I agree with the post above.
So that we can eat it without having to spit seeds?
The short story is that parthenocarpy is a naturally occurring variation that humans use to their advantage. Humans select and propagate parthenocarpic varieties but parthenocarpic fruit will bear seeds if pollinated. So where seeds are considered inconvenient, as in persimmons, humans hide the female trees from male-flowering trees to get seedless fruit.
Similarly, the parthenocarpic fruit of a common fig will bear seeds if pollinated. But the [pollinated seeds are innocuous. Humans grow seedless fig trees more or less by accident – in locations that lack male trees (caprifigs) and/or lack pollinator wasps.
Think of your fig and persimmon trees as slaves. Given their freedom they’d love to make seeds, but we don’t let them.
For completeness I should add that some species that exhibit parthenocarpy can propagate vegetatively and therefore do not require seeds. Of course, this vegetative propagation lacks the advantages of genetic mixing that accompanies pollination.