Looks like others got to it first, but regardless,
Meader
Large-fruited Virginia
Sosnovskaya (Sosnovska in the image which is in Ukrainian, but I’m guessing the Russian form is what is most common in English. It’s a last name and a toponym, derived from the word for pine. )
Chuchupaka
Sofiyivka’s gift (Or Sofiyivsky’s gift. Same translation issue as Nikita’s gift, so a similar English translation would Sophie’s gift, which I guess is fine. Sofiyivsky and Nikitsky are place names, not people’s names, which would be more like Dar Sophii and Dar Nikiti, but the usual English translation drops that for simplicity’s sake. I suspect most people here know these are named after botanic gardens anyway.)
Rosseyanka (Again, Rosiyanka in the image, but the common English transliteration is in the Russian form. The word means “Russian woman”)
God’s gift
Nikitska Burgundy (Could be translated as Nikita’s burgundy, but same translation issue as above, and in this case, Nikitska might be in the adjectival form rather than genitive i.e. possessive form, though I’m not sure if this is the case as the difference isn’t as clearly marked in Ukrainian as it is in Russian and Surzhyk AFAIK. I am also a bit unsure about which gender Burgundy is in.)
Mount Goverla (Or Mount Hoverla. Tallest mountain in Ukraine.)
After a lot of searching, I think it’s safe to say:
The Japanese Kaki variety Tsurunoko is widely identified in the U.S. as Chocolate.
Many varieties are described, here and abroad, as “Chocolate” or “chocolate” but are not Tsurunoko. “Chocolate” is a great descriptor for any persimmon with dark flesh and especially dark skin.
The only testimony I could find asserting that Tsurunoko is pistillate-constant is Richard’s California source from 1988. I have no idea what their claim was based on. The U Chicago publication form 1915 shows Tsurunoko with both male and female flowers.
Id certainly claim no authority but Im generally skeptical of any claim regarding sex of persimmon cultivars, since it seems at least in some cases to be a mutable trait. Someone can maybe chime in but I recall much discussion in the past around Szukis, for example. I recall a Jeremy Lehman talk (NAFEX maybe) where he expounded on some of his observations. As I recall, he (and perhaps others) noted that branches bearing male flowers would continue to do so when grafted, behaving somewhat like a sport. Just this past year, I received scionwood from Buzz Ferver for “male Szukis”. People talk about polygamodioecy, though like PVNA, et all Im not sure there is neat genetic analog to this trait. I would have to assume similar things would be at play with sex expression as astringency, with different combinations of alleles leading to various sex expressions. I looked up at one point what genes control sex expression in flowering plants. I forget the specifics offhand, but there are several mechanisms at play, and multiple “sexes” rather than simply two, even in diploid species. Extrapolating M and F to a hexaploid flowering plant seems pretty presumptuous.
Perhaps this question has been answered already, but can persimmon seeds be feminized using hormones or colloidal silver? It is quite common when breeding hops and medicinal cannabis. Persimmons produce flowers from new growth, so it may be possible to force male flowers on a female tree if it responds to the chemicals. Has anybody tried this?
Hi, I stumbled upon your old message saying you grafted Dar Sofiyivki. Are you still growing it? If so, would you be able to sell me a scion? If not, would you know of anyone who might have one? (I checked with Cliff England, he won’t have any this year, and Fusion_power had a few but I missed out.) Thanks!
My graft is new this Spring and I am doing breeding with it so I will not cut any scions for a couple of years and let it flower for crossing it with my 400-5 hybrid male hardy to -33F. Email Cliff and request to put you on his waiting list is your best bet.
Which reminds me, what is the best way to optimize usage of grafting wood of a persimmon? I have a Dar Sofiyivky that can donate about 3 feet of scionwood. It also has 3 or 4 small branches about 3/16 inch diameter. I’m fairly sure I can get about 150 buds total including the limbs. Would be nice if I could turn that into 50 or so trees. Has anyone practiced extreme multiplication grafting with persimmon?
I mainly do single bud persimmon grafts anymore. Personally I favor a stubby side graft to a chip or t-bud, probably because Ive had low take on bud grafts when Ive tried (not on persimmon). I feel the little bit of wood gives more margin for error vs cutting directly under the bud, but thats just me. I know others have great luck with bud grafts. 3/16 is no problem. Id do a longer side graft though if possible to get some extra surface area.
stress is also commonly used too, I believe. not sure either about the mutagen method. has been tried in earnest. someone on list was keen to do it with mulberries and sounded serious about trying. im recalling that part of the deal with Szukis as described by Lehman and others has to do with sex expression of progeny. I believe its been claimed that all progeny of Szukis pollen are female.
As a grafter with not much experience I have done chip bud on persimmons with pretty good luck. On all other grafts (I usually do cleft, whip, whip and tongue, and occasionally bark grafting) and usually use just one bud if there is enough wood to separate them. I usually wait pretty late to do persimmons because they need the heat but other than that I’ve had pretty good luck with them. Would love to get one of your Dar Sofiyivky trees after your grafting!
There seem to be mechanisms for both expression and suppression of stamenate and pistillate flowers. I would draw a connection to concepts from another branch of biochemistry, with which Im more familiar: neuroscience. Broadly, there are both excitatory and inhibitory responses that act on particular biochemical pathways. These are modulated however by agonist and antagonist responses. So for example, a given hormone may act as an antagonist of an inhibitory response, leading to INCREASED activation of that biochemical pathway.
I think that reproductive structures (flower parts) start off the same and undergo a process of differentiation (as seen in animal development) so perhaps a better way to think about the sex of an individual is a set of instructions about how this differentiation occurs rather than a fixed trait that results in the end. Feminization is sort of intervening in that process to achieve a different outcome from the same initial instructions.
“The term ‘cosexual’ (Lloyd, 1984) is used when individual plants have both sex functions, whether present within each flower (hermaphrodite), or in separate male and female flowers (monoecious). A minority of plant species are ‘sexually polymorphic’, including dioecious species, with separate males and females (Table 1). Many dioecious species with hermaphrodite relatives have evident rudiments of opposite sex structures in flowers of plants of each sex, suggesting recent evolution of unisexual flowers (Darwin, 1877). The low frequency and scattered taxonomic distribution of dioecy and sex chromosomes suggest that cosexuality is the ancestral angiosperm state (Figure 1) (Charlesworth, 1985; Renner and Ricklefs, 1995.”
So its perhaps not surprising that an individual plant would maintain that capacity, much as higher mammals retain primal structures (and their functions) like the medula.
Here is the first fruit of Luo tian tian shi.
This fruit helps confirm the variety. Although still a little green, this persimmon is very sweet and without any harshness.
Its seeds are very large. Pollination by a hybrid pollinator is likely, but a Hanagosho is also not far away.
I used this tool below for 1st time to pick them when they are hard (attached to my Docupole, but prob would work on any cheap threaded pole from Amazon). I had 700 this year that I picked over a couple weeks (had 800 a couple years ago prob when i met you, and 150 last year [maybe cause I pruned it]).
It was pretty great for picking hard fruit, a few may ‘pop out’ (if you have to force the branch to bend more than usual, then it may ‘ricochet’ out of basket),
but 95% go down into the bag and can collect multiple ones quickly+easily.
5% land on grass or driveway. For those 5%, if it lands on grass its fine, but driveway ones that cracked I dehydrated the fruit to maximize usable fruit.
