I planted my Chocolate persimmon about 8 years ago. 4 years ago we had very nice bright orange unpollinated fruit that was very tasty, but at the time I had wondered why this variety name? The next year to our surprise the fruit turned dark as it ripened. When we harvested it they were full of seed with dark flesh that had very poor texture and essentially not palatable, certainly not worth fighting the squirrels over. Then last year more of the same, at which time I began to realize this variety has both male and female flowers. For some reason the first year was a fluke and we got to enjoy one year out of 4 so far. So this spring I resolved to try to prevent pollination by removing only the male flowers before the females open. Since I had no experience I tried researching the topic to see if anyone had taken photos of the male vs female chocolate flowers. The only place I found online was a fellow who created a video of the American persimmon ( he was in process of marking male trees for removal). So I decided to create this thread for anyone who is as disappointed in chocolate persimmons as my family has been. In th3 meantime starting last year I began chip budding the majority of my scaffolds with more desirable varieties, and some are actually growing this year, while I also bark grafted a good number of other new varieties several weeks ago. So by this fall once I gather hopefully some bright orange unpollinated fruit once again, I can then began to remove a good portion of the chocolate wood.
I believe from my limited knowledge that the flowers I removed today were indeed just male flowers. I captured pics of the tree, the female flowers and the male flowers I removed, in that order below.
If you happen to have more experience than I in distinguishing male from female chocolate persimmon flowers, please comment to tell me and anyone interested, which you think are male vs female! Thanks for reading I look forward to your responses. Once I have ripening fruit this fall from the flowers remaining, I am hoping to update this thread on what I determined.
Dennis
Kent, Wa
Cut down the tree and graft other varieties. Once I had around ten varieties of persimmon, including chocolate. That made all other persimmon full of seeds.
Thanks Sophia
I had wondered if it do that. Good to know that I need to do a 100% top work!
Hi Sophia,
Can you tell me which specific other varieties the Chocolate gave you pollination problems? I assume they were all Asian, as I have read that Asian and Native American persimmons cannot cross pollinate.
Dennis
All mine are Asian varieties. So around 90% of persimmons are full of seeds. I just have one small graft. So the pollinating ability is wonderful.
Hi Dennis,
I was actually thinking the same thing but here i also have maru which has male flowers as well. my chocolate is late in flowering this year so you are ahead. i made a video about the female and male flowers and yoy got it right on! great to see a thread about it! hope my video is helpful for anyone who is interested.
Hi Kim,
Today I cleared my Chocolate of all its male flowers to assure it cannot pollinate any other of my nearby Asian persimmon trees. I posted this on the forum and one lady informed me she had to completely remove her chocolate tree.
So as I researched the issue I ran across this article below from a master gardener from Ca:
These two paragraphs of her pdf gave me concerns about having my Fuyu’s and other Asian persimmons too close to my neighbors Hachiya:
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/napanewspaper/index.cfm?start=1&tagname=Fuyu
“Two varieties account for most of the persimmons grown in home orchards: the ‘Fuyu’ and the ‘Hachiya’. Both produce larger fruit than many other varieties, such as the ‘Hayakuma’, ‘Izu’ and Diospyros virginiana. The ‘Hayakuma’ has medium-sized orange fruit and chocolate- or cinnamon- colored flesh if pollinated. ‘Izu’ produces round, medium-sized fruit. Diospyros virginiana, which is native to the U. S., yields small, flavorful fruit. It tolerates both drought and excess moisture, but it suckers badly.
Neither the ‘Hachiya’ nor the ‘Fuyu’ needs cross pollination, which means that the tree will produce fruit without another persimmon tree nearby. In fact, cross pollination can be a problem if the ‘Hachiya’ and ‘Fuyu’ are planted within one-half mile of each other. If a ‘Fuyu’ is close to another variety producing male flowers, some of the ‘Fuyu’ fruit will be seedy. If a ‘Hachiya’ is pollinated from another variety, black areas will appear in the flesh and the fruit will have seeds.”
Now that I am aware of this issue, I am wondering if you or one of your friends would want to trade trees this fall? I would like to replace my neighbors Hachiya with another variety to avoid this conflict as the trees get old enough to fruit. So I would need to find someone who has no other Asian varieties to take his Hachiya.
I have another local friend whom I have promised to give a tree to, I had planed to give him my other Hachiya that I recently grafted with Several of other Asian varieties. Now I am thinking I should remove these scions and keep the Hachiya a single variety tree before I give it to him.
What would you do?
Dennis
hi Dennis, what variety was your friend most interested in if hachiya then maybe a single variety graft would be ideal. if he doesnt have preference maybe remove the hachiya branch and keep all the others will be better! just depends if you friend wants a non astrigent or astrigent variety.
Yes i love to trade you for some other fruit tree for your neighbors larger hachiya. we can figure that out when you are ready to trade.
i only know maru and chocolate and hanafuyu making male flowers the other variety i think only make female flowers
The female flower is a single flower and the male flower is in a cluster of three. If you clip all the male flowers off before they open then you will have the yellow fruit.
I haven’t tasted chocolate persimmon but I have tasted coffee cake as well as Maru. They both turn brown inside when pollinated. I like the pollinated flavor and actually prefer it to yellow fruit which is insipid.
Not sure if chocolate behaves differently.
If you are in the Seattle area, Town & Country grocery store has them for sale for $3.95/each. Didn’t see if they were imported or not. They did have organic sweet Fuyu from Wild River Farm (Marysville, California). Haven’t tried either of them yet, probably be a few weeks until they are ripe. Nice to see a new variety available.
Chocolate on left, sweet Fuyu on right.
