I have a few young persimmon trees. This is the 3rd year in the ground for this one. The leaves are different than my other Japanese persimmons. They are greener, thinner, smaller and less fleshy, also with a tinge of red. More like my American root stock.
This is my only PCA variety and I’m relatively new to persimmons, so I didn’t think to much of it.
I got them from http://www.plantmegreen.com/products/persimmon-saijo On their website they have 2 different pictures of the fruit. In one of them the leaves look somewhat like mine, but the fruit is more squat, not the elongated shape I’m used to seeing.
Their 2nd, close-up, picture of Saijo does have the more elongated fruit and the leaves in that picture look more like my other kaki persimmon trees (Izu and Fuyugaki).
Anybody care to guess what variety the first picture on their site is if not Saijo?
Wow, yours has much greener leaves than mine. I see what you say about the shape. Maybe yours is the real thing and mine is not.
This photo is from the blog farmerscrub.blogspot.com. It’s hard to say but I think it looks more like yours. Maybe the growth conditions have an effect on the leaf shape. I don’t know that our conditions are so different, though. Another thought, is there a rootstock effect? Mine is on Diospyros lotus.
One way you could find out - graft some scion of known Saijo onto yours.
Interesting question! If you get persimmons next year, that will help!
I looked at my Yates American persimmon today. I think your leaves look more like that, than like my Saijo. With luck, there could be a first taste from both the Yates and Nikita’s gift this year. The fruits are swelling. But none on Saijo.
I don’t know about that nursery. For another nursery, I saw the same photo used for multiple names for a fig. One time it was Negronne, another time it was Petite negri, and another time something else. But the photo remained the same. Sometimes nurseries are… creative… with their illustrations.
Yeah, I was just at the Arboretum today and looked at several of the persimmons there including Saijo. I think mine looks more like a Virginiana. I now just hope that it is a named female cultivar, preferably self-fruitful, and not a rootstock sucker.
I should have taken a Saijo cutting for budding to one of my rootstocks. It is fruiting this year, as is Izu and some others I’ve been dying to taste.
BTW, even some reputable nurseries like One Green World use the same photo for more than one cultivar, which guarantees at least one is not accurate. I think they do that with a sort of stock photo, which would be okay if they labeled the photo as such.
Its very frustrating, especially when I’m looking at the pictures to help make a buying decision between cultivars.
Ideally nurseries would have a picture of their own stock.
Okay, I’m convinced that what I have is Virginiana or a cross. But now I wonder if it is a grafted tree (preferably self-fruitful) that was mis-labeled. Or if it was a root stock that grew from a failed graft or some such.
If I knew it were just root stock I’d probably graft it to a self fruitful American like Garretson or Early Golden. Its in a place where I wouldn’t mind a tall shade tree specimen.
But if it is a mis-labeled, named cultivar I’d prefer to grow it out and get the fruit.
I bought it as a pretty good sized potted plant, so it seems strange that nursery could grow it mixed in with a bunch of pots containing real Saijo without this being obviously different.
The other tree I bought from them was labled Fuyugaki. I only bought that one because it pushed me over the “free shipping” thresshold and which effectively was quite a discount. If it really is Fuyugaki it is probably too late ripening to be reliable for me. But who knows what they actually sent. It is a kaki at least. And it serving as a host for Nishimura Wase and Chocolate now as backups in case my grafts to root stocks didn’t take (they did).
I’ll likely graft Saijo onto a tree closer to the other kaki.
As an update. This tree has been grafted to a Claypool variety that is the one that’s trademarked as Prairie Star and is growing nicely and fruiting. In fact, its my only productive persimmon so far, so I’m very happy to have it.
My attempts to graft Saijo to it failed. I bought a separate Saijo tree…
