While anecdotal evidence is generally a reason for me to take pause, as a (mostly) field based scientist I’m also in a position to question “the research” on a regular basis and test a generally accepted hypothesis. Sometimes the things I work on do not have enough data to arrive at a sound conclusion, so I have to punt and hope that what we do works well. If it doesn’t, we try something else.
The scenario with male /female /hermaphroditic flowers on persimmons kind of makes me wonder if treating a branch that has male flowers on a mostly female tree would result in a “sport” type scenario where the grafted tree might be more inclined to produce more male flowers. Maybe I am completely off base.
I wonder if anyone has tried to test this theory with Taishu specifically.
@jrd51 to your point, maybe testing that hypothesis on something like Morris Burton which has known excellent fruit but also a tendency to make male flowers could be tested.