You have a 50/50 percent chance of it is being a female or a male. A female has a single flower that will form fruit. A male with a cluster flower is of three then no fruit. You can also graft it over if it was a male.
Tony
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That looks like diospyros lotus to me
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Even in case of female. Does it need male flower for pollination to form the fruit? Thank you so much for information Tony.
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My A-33 has most of its leaves folded. I saw it react by folding its leaves when I added some dirt to bury the graft union deeper and also watered it heavily. That was 2 weeks ago. I just moved it to half-day shade (it’s spending it’s first winter in a 6 gallon bucket). Is the folded leaves normal?
The short answer is no, it’s not needed. Persimmons are parthenocarpic so they can produce fruit without pollination. However some cultivars have rather poor fruit set without a pollinator.
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I agree that looks like Caucasian persimmon, and there’s no chance of getting good fruit off of that, and that’s a dangerous invasive plant, we don’t want that growing wild instead of American persimmon or American x Asian hybrids.
You really need to graft that in the spring.
If it’s Caucasian Persimmon, which it does look like it is, you’ll have a 50% chance of getting 1/2” fruits that fall on the ground and splat the moment they’re ripe, and they’re astringent right up until a day or two before they fall.
You’re in a great area for Persimmons and probably could even graft a pure Asian that’s more cold hardy; Nikitskaya Bordovaya (Nikita’s Gift) is your safest bet though.
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Probably heat stress. Try to mulch the base of the tree and water often when the soil feel dry to your finger touch. Once the long tap root established then it is good on its own.
Tony
Hi Tony, have you tried many of David Pierce’s varieties? Have you tried any of his that reliably fruit well without a male in zone 5, even if the fruit size is more in line with virginiana?
I grafted the KYT Kentucky Thanksgiving 2 years ago. It is 6 feet tall now and can handle the cold to -18 F this February so far. I also had a few started seeds from him and the seedlings are at five feet tall. Btw, the parent of all of his cross was Rossyanka. The ukranian used Nikita’s Gift as the parent in their crossed
Tony
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How was the fruit on KYT Thanksgiving?
David Pierce stated that KYT tasted best out of his 100 plus seedlings. Hopefully my 2 KYT trees will flower next spring.
Tony
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Thanks Tony! do you have any worry that KYT ripens too late for our area? That would be great if we could get a hybrid that holds on to a lot of fruit without a male, but ripens earlier like the Americans. I did see you had backcrossed some with Prok, that will be great to see how those turn out once they fruit!
Most of the Hybrid persimmons can be ripen on the counter as long as the skin turned pale orange. I used to collect all my American persimmon fruits at pale orange and they can be ripen on the counter for a month.
Tony
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Kassandra seedlings in year 2. They are the most vigorous persimmon seedlings that I’ve seen. Typically they are much slower growers in our PNW climate. Thank you again @jrd51 for the seeds! I have a few of them growing.
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You’re very welcome. Those seedlings look incredible. I’m convinced that that’s the way to go for rootstock. I’m gonna grow out the seedlings I found beneath the Kasandra tree and, if possible, start more seedlings next year.
Hopefully there’ll be seeds again this year. There will probably be fewer because this year I moved the PVNAs far away. I did that so that I could have Taishu as the only male-flowering persimmon near my JT-02. Maybe the Taishu tree will produce seeds on both JT-02 and Kasandra, which is also close.
I suppose I’d grow out JT-02 seedlings as rootstock too – but leave a branch on each so I can test the fruit for non astringency. I suppose you might do the same. The pollen source for your seedlings is probably a PVNA (though possibly Taishu). There’s some possibility that my Kasandra seed produces a PVNA hybrid.
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If you have such fast growing seedlings, what about stooling your fastest growing and turning it into propagated rootstocks? And you could graft the tops of your rootstocks to test its sex and fruiting, and if the fruit is good you really have a gold mine: own root hybrid persimmons of a new variety! and no worries about KSDS either.
@SteadyStan you could also try this.
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Here are my Kassandra seedlings that are in their second growing season. Some were started in December of 2024 and some in April 2025. (Fruit was from jrd51!)
I was 3 for 6 when grafting to them. 2 of the 3 successful ones were salvaged from unsuccessful grafts of them on dv rootstock.
Since the Kassandra tree that produced these seeds is growing on dv rootstock without issue that means the rootstock doesn’t have KSDS. Thus the seeds it produces won’t either. Is that logic correct?
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All the Kasandra and JT-02 seeds that you sent to me gotten eat up by some animals. I dug up the two pots and none to be seen. That was 20 plus seeds. Thanks goodness that the Kasandra X open (Rossy male) from Cliff England got spared and they are growing well. These are probably more cold hardier than yours since Cliff only have Rossy male. I can’t wait until these seedlings produce. So far my six Kujinaja X Open (Rossy male) from Cliff is on their 3 leaf and 5 feet tall. They handled the -18F this February just fine.
Tony
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Sounds right to me. The seedlings look great.
Unbelievably excited to see what comes out of this. They could even be significantly hardier than -18 as well, especially with them surviving so young.
Have you considered grafting a scion of each onto a mature stock to see how the fruit are faster?
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