Just found the following list of selection criteria that Jim Claypool used in his breeding program:
1.Reduce the long ripening period
2.Improve fruit size
3.Calyx holding to fruit when dropping from the tree
4.Increase the already wonderful flavor
5.Skin tough enough to hold fruit when it strikes ground
6.Better the color of skin or attractiveness
7.Reduce seed numbers
8.Eliminate black spots in fruit flesh
9.Improve pulp color & longevity when frozen
4 of these 9 traits (#3, #6, #8, and #9) seem to only matter as far as appearance and marketability, traits I’d be very willing to sacrifice, especially for the sake of scoring higher with #4 (taste) and #7 (few or no seeds). Sellable persimmons would be nice, but I wouldn’t want to sacrifice a persimmon that would be best for my own use for the sake of sellability traits. And I have a long enough season, that I’m not concerned about #1. Size (#2) matters to me mainly insofar as larger size tends to mean a better flesh-to-seed ratio, but if I could achieve a better flesh-to-seed ratio (especially complete seedlessness) with just average size I’d be very happy still. I would also guess that size correlates disadvantageously, especially on more mature taller trees, when it comes to the splat factor (#5, skin tough enough to hold fruit when it strikes the ground). It’s interesting that #5 is a trait that assumes the opposite of what Dax said would be a leading selection trait for him (being able to pick fruit from the tree without astringency). It seems there are clearly a lot of different ways that different people might choose their favorites, i.e. that “the best” is highly subjective, even when people agree about how to score each cultivar on any given trait. And then, of course, I’m sure how different cultivars score on the selection traits would vary significantly according to where they were grown.
@JesseS
For me meader is usually the earliest.
Followed by early golden
Then prok
This year I had a garretson that had its first crop and it had some ripe 2 weeks befor meader, They were good early, later I am having a hard time telling which ones are astringent, several still on trees.
Meader seemed late this year. And I am sill eating some.
In defense of meader , ( some people don’t like it.). I do like it.
I have a tree on the path to my garden, it’s often the first to ripen , and has a long harvest season.not a concentrated drop. So I find myself eating some often when I pass by. They are smaller than some other varietys.
With less mass they often don’t splatter like bigger softer varietys when they hit the ground.Mine are seedless here, good. Still a few hanging now.
Early golden seams to be a good producer here, shorter harvest season , so more to pick during that time.soft, big all gone now.
Prok is my favorite to eat, very large ,very soft, often splatters when it hits the ground.very good flavor ! Still a few hanging now.
Ruby : 2 trees had a bad early leaf drop for many years. Not much fruit,
This year I gave them some borax and a good dose of nitrogen,and no leaf drop ,and a decent crop of fruit.unfortunatly I don’t really like the fruit.not as sweet kind of odd texture, but still a lot on the trees, slowly ripening , maybe next year they be different ? It seems each year they are all a little different than the year before
My sweet lent is not ripe yet
As for@cousinfloyd question about different tast of pulp purée , well I’dont know, I pick what I can each day, and mix different varietys together.
There are differences in tast ,texture etc. of different varietys for sure,although hard to put to words.
My biggest challenge is to find the ones without astringency ,
I look for ones that have changed to a more golden translucent color.soft and slightly wrinkling .come off tree easily (just befor they rot ?) try to pick ground clean each day.so the ones on the ground have only been there 1 day. This part is not a perfect science,there are still astringent ones that slip through the grading .
All of my grafted persimmons here are essentially seedless, varys some by the year,
This year only 3 seeds out of “all I have picked”
Some years 1 seed in 10 fruit.
I do have a lot of wild 60 chromosomes trees around , fruit with seeds in the wild ones
A few persimmon pictures from this year. I think I agree with Lucky that most Americans taste about the same – although some seem to lose astringency better than others and that affects flavor. For me with a shorter growing season, ripening time is important. Prok ripens earliest of the Americans here in the Boston area. I have a few more that haven’t fruited yet, but so far Prok is the champ.
Not everything is fully ripe in these photos, but we had a strong wind/rain storm come through over the weekend that stripped all the persimmon trees of their leaves. We’ll see if the Americans can lose more of their astringency on the counter or in the freezer.
NC-10 is historically dropping ripe fruits here by Sept.10, but ALL grafted persimmons that had any fruit this year were way early… most were gone before Oct 1.
I should add that the kakis are container grown. I have them growing in large plastic trash cans that are attached to a wheeled base so I can roll them under the barn for the winter.
I have a lot of American persimmon cultivars in my orchard and so far my experience is that the ones that loose astringency fastest are NC21, Early golden, Geneva red, Prok these are also early or quite early ripening. They become edible when slightly soft at the touch. Most other persimmons have to be really dead soft to be edible (Yates, Szukiss, Ruby, Geneva long, etc;). The fact that they are edible when still quite firm is in my experience also to a large extend related to the fact that they are early ripening. When persimmons ripen early when the weather is still warm they will loose astringency quite fast. If the same persimmon varieties would have to ripen in cooler cirumstances they might not loose astringency all together… I have experienced that late ripening persimmons will never loose astringency in a cooler climate. A good example is “Meader”. This is the only variety in my orchard that has such a long harvesting period. This variety bears abundant fruit and a lot of it will ripen quite early and without hardly any astringency. However, more than 2/3rd of the fruit will remain on the tree and never ripen at all. Some will even stay on the tree while still green but a lot will go orange but never loose astringency because by this time temperatures have dropped to much and because of this the fruit retains its astringency. Another example is “Pieper”: this is the earliest variety in my collection and it can usually be harvested end of September. This variety has to be dead ripe before it is edible but it ripens really very early I’m sure that the fruit of this variety would remain astringent if it were to be harvested in a cool climate where the fruit would ripen to late in the season.
Another very important factor that is never addressed is that persimmon (both Asian and American) need a lot of summer heat to be able to produce sweet and ripe fruit at the end of the season. So not just a lot of sun but most importantly a lot of heat. This is why persimmon that grow in more northern coastal areas (milder winter temps and cooler summer temps)will never taste as good as the same persimmons that grow in a northern more continental climate (very cold winter-very hot summer).
Very interesting comments, Mikatani. Thanks for sharing!
I wonder, of course, what the implications are for my location in the Southeast: fairly short winters with average mid-winter lows in the 20’s, moderately long but plenty hot (80+ degrees nearly every single day for 100+ days straight) summers. You talk about the earliest variety in your collection ripening late September. That’s a full month (or a little more) after the earliest persimmons to ripen here. If your theory is true, persimmons that never lose their astringency fully in shorter-colder summers might still be really good here, and other persimmons might taste even better when grown here. That might be a theory that could be tested.
I have noticed something roughly similar to what you described with a large wild tree that produces 98% seedless fruit: the first few weeks of the crop (roughly August 20-Sep 10) are good and non-astringent, but then the persimmons no longer fully lose their astringency. There’s still plenty of heat in mid-September here, though, not quite as much as August, of course, and varying from year to year, but maybe enough to make the difference. I’m curious whether this tree drops non-astringent fruit longer in years when the summer heat really persists into and through September.
Mikatani, what other traits besides complete loss of astringency have you noticed varying between your different varieties that you consider valuable?
Garretson ripens before Early GOlden for me here, and I like it better in flavor and it’s bigger. Our ripening dates have moved way up. It used to be later October into NOvember, so only the earliest ripening varieties. Now we’re getting ripening in late Septermber on a regular basis. I don’t find Szukis to be worth eating really, but I use it to pollinate the others, as Claypool had the male pollinator as important as the female for taste difference. H-118 and NC 10 haven’t ripened yet for me, but I’m looking forward to it.
John S
PDX OR
