Does anyone have a reasonably complete and authoritative description of the Early Golden group? Or at least some authoritative information. It seems that such info would be very useful both for breeders and for growers.
Early Golden is a popular American persimmon in its own right, but it also has served as the pollen donor producing a number of great crosses. For example, as I understand it, H-63A is Morris Burton x Early Golden, I-94 / Valene Beauty is Lena x Early Golden.
My understanding is that many other popular pollen donors are descendants of Early Golden, including Garretson, George, G1, G2, Killen, Golden Supreme, John Rick, Szukis, among others. Consider this a very tentative list based on unreliable reports. What these varieties share is Early Golden’s ability to produce both female flowers (fruit) and male flowers (pollen). The fruit shows us what characteristics to hope for in the children; the pollen enables a cross with some other desirable female. As I understand it, H-118 and H-120 are Juhl x George. F-25 is Morris Burton x George. H-55A is Juhl x Garretson.
p.s. Elsewhere I questioned an assertion that Early Golden was always the best rated persimmon in Jim Claypool’s taste tests. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate its value as a pollen donor.
Maybe the easier list would be ones that don’t have EG in it. Thinking most of them are wild selections like Mohler. I’ve got Meader and Yates and they don’t have EG in them.
Fair point. For breeding, it really helps to have a monoecious variety (male and female on the same plant) because then you can predict the impact of there male on the fruit. That is, you can sample the fruit. If it’s good, you can take pollen from the same tree.
This trait seems non-standard in American persimmons. Early Golden has this trait. It appears to pass along this trait to many of its descendants. [Not all of its descendants because there are many such as H-63A that are only female.]. So if you are using a monoecious variety, maybe it’s highly likely that it traces its ancestry back to Early Golden. Or an ancestor of Early Golden.
I became aware of this pattern looking at Jim Claypool’s crosses, the vast majority of which seem to have an Early Golden family tree as the pollen donor.
So maybe it is easier to ask which monoecious trees are not descended from EG?
Many wont agree with what im going to say, but it is the truth. @KYnuttrees obviously does agree and so i’m going to use Cliff Englands words to say it " Early Golden – This Persimmon is the original grafted persimmon from the late 1800s. It set the standard and for the past 100 years has been used as a measure for all newly developed persimmon cultivars. EG is the progenitor of the most recently developed persimmons cultivars in the Claypool and the Lehman breeding programs." And i’m going to add to what Cliff said and say i think it is over 200 years that has passed and every American Persimmon is compared to EG. I’m also going to say here in zones 6a all my early golden i grafted died back over winter. All of my H118 lived 100%. @snowflake has a cold climate but here mine can go from 70 degrees to -25 or -30F in days then shoot back up to 80 like a yo-yo. @39thparallel is about azone warmer but only less than 30 minutes away. Some persimmons even die back at his place. All new american persimmons as we know them came from early golden. The improved types like h118 really are an improvement from early golden at least in terms of cold hardiness.
Yeah, that’s consistent with what I’ve seen. Deliberate manual pollination seems to start with a monoecious variety, apparently usually descended from EG. Open pollination using wind or insects can utilize pollen from an EG-family male flower that happens to be in the area or a wild DV male or these days maybe even a monoecious hybrid.
Is cold hardiness the only desirable trait lacking in Early Golden? For warmer zones, can we plant EG knowing it’s probably the best tasting DV available?
It probably has a number of issues. It very commonly gets heavily spotted black leaves (anthracnose or whatever) in my location (I only see that on one other variety this year, Morris Burton on poor soil)… and I’m relatively dry compared to where most people are growing persimmon. So, something to consider if you like clean green leaves. For those impatient for fruit, early golden is also not as uniformly and highly productive at a young age as most any of their other “improved” varieties. That can vary (on some rootstock it will be early or late), but on average Garretson, as a descendant, is much more productive, very young, and doesn’t burn back here.
I will say that Dollywood/D-128 might be another one that burns back more severely in the winter, which it might have inherited from EG.
Similar here, although we might be wearing shorts during your coldest weather Persimmon are pretty good at waiting through the crazy ups and downs of winter/spring, but some varieties seem more affected by that than others.
Thanks. So does Garretson get a lot of votes for best tasting DV? I withdraw that question not to hijack the thread. i found a top five overall taste thread here:Top 5 persimmons for taste and texture? - #9 by Yoda
I just haven’t had enough samples to get a firm idea. I had surgery last year and didn’t take very good notes on Garretson. But, it wasn’t a variety that made me go “Wow! I need to make a note of that!” I might be able to make a better comment this fall.
Do you have evidence that the Lehman variety Dollywood/D-128 has EG ancestry? The Lehman crosses seem very poorly documented. I couldn’t find anything on D-128. Thanks.
D128/Dollywood = Miller x G2. G2 = open pollinated of Garretson That would make Dollywood an EG offspring. We need a mega ancestry chart… with a lot of crossing wires.
Well, elsewhere I asked the question about provenance. You are right that there is a D-128 in the Claypool records and you are right that it is Miller x G2. But the D-128 named Dollywood is widely attributed to Lehman. Do you know for sure that it is the same variety? Or did they just use overlapping naming schemes?
No, Lehman didn’t use that numbering scheme. Lehman did things like 100-46… Compton did have some seeds from Claypool that would have formed a new row at Claypools orchard. I believe they were labeled M-… Lehman and Owen might have been involved in naming Dollywood, but Lehman didn’t create it.
Persimmon are pretty good at waiting through the crazy ups and downs of winter/spring, but some varieties seem more affected by that than others.