My persimmon is a boy....and a girl! (really)

[thecityman]

I have a chocolate persimmon that has produced nice fruit the last 2 years. And this year it has several blooms that are very clearly fruit blooms…you can even see the small fruit in them. But here is the crazy part…the exact same tree also has a LOT of male blooms. What gives? Anyone every seen or heard of this?

I’ve gotten fruit from the tree so I know it is part female and it has the large, fruit in center blooms on part of it this year. It also has big bunches of those really small male blooms! I am 100% sure it has both male and female blooms on it. I am also 100% sure that the difference is not due to a root-stock or root shoot that I let grow up and get mixed in: there will be males, then females, then males again as you go up the tree. They don’t happen on the same limbs but are on the same tree for sure.

The worst part of all this is that I used some of this tree for graft wood this year since I knew it makes good fruit, but the area where I harvested my scion wood must have been from a male area, because 2 of my grafts already took and immediately sent out male blooms! (darn it!).

Is this incredibly rare, sort of rare, common, or unheard of? All my other persimmon trees are single sex.

I’m very confused here and looking forward to your responses about my hermaphrodite tree! ha

[jerry63]

It happens in mulberry also . So not all that rare I think . Limited persimmon experience but I know it happens .

[tjasko]

Chocolate is known for having both male and female flowers. There are a few persimmon varieties which do this.

[thecityman]

Thanks guys. This just blew my mind and I thought I might have some kind of world renown, freakish tree on my hands.

Can someone perhaps offer some advice on the grafts I did using this same tree that have already shown themselves to have male flowers? I mean, will they likely end up having both male and female flowers when they mature (ie will they ever make fruit)? If not, as much as it will pain me to do it I might as well go ahead and cut them off. The entire reason for grafting one of them is that I’m top working a male tree (Diospyros virginiana) with a cutting from my Chocolate tree.

Thanks

[tjasko]

I have only book-learning here, not actual experience, but my understanding is that you can expect those sticks to produce female flowers when they mature.

[clarkinks]

Can you post some pictures?

[fruitnut]

Mine usually had 500 males and maybe 50 females on a small tree. But it usually didn’t pollinate itself, no seeds, no taste.

[thecityman]

@clarkinks ask and ye shall receive.

WE had a hard rain last night and it knocked off most of the male flowers, so I couldn’t get a good shot of the entire tree that showed all the male and female both. However, here are 2 photos I took over the weekend in case everyone said I was crazy and a tree wouldn’t have both! haha. Both of these photos are of different limbs on my Chocolate Persimmons. I don’t think anyone can argue that these are male and female flowers!

Thanks, @fruitnut , nice to know it isn’t as unusual as I thought. Last year this didn’t happen and my fruit were very good. I hope this doesn’t mean they will be tasteless!

Females:

Males:

[Hillbillyhort]

Maybe rename it … " HESHE"

Has a nice oriental sound to it.

[thecityman]

@Hillbillyhort that is a good name…heck, aside from the spelling it even sounds a little bit Japanese or Chinese to me! haha

Anyone noticed that there have been a lot of discussions about persimmons the last few days? I must say that this suits me very much! I’m thinking very seriously about getting into persimmons- astringent ones at least- in a very big way. I already loved Hachiya which was the only Asian astringent I’d tasted…until last year. My Saijo put out quite a bit of fruit for the first time and it was so wonderful it just stunned me. I already planted 3 more of them and a Nakita’s Gift this spring. They are one of the easiest fruits I grow (persimmons in general) and yet tie with Spring Satin Plumcot as my all-time favorite fruit I grow. I don’t spray them and the only problem I’ve ever had was some stick-cutter bugs that neatly sawed off several pencil sized limbs. NO Plum Curculio, OFM, borers, and no diseases. Most have been cold hardy for me (Lost a Hachiya to winter though). This may well be my next big thing. So keep up all the persimmon threads and posts! ha.

[Seattlefiggirl]

how are your chocolate this year? seeded or seedless? flavor?

[thecityman]

My tree was once almost all female with just a few male flowers. THen each year it transitioned more and more toward male, with a larger percentage of male blooms each year. This year there was only one small limb that had female blooms and the whole rest of my tree was male blooms. So, because I didn’t much care about the tree anymore AND because I wanted to keep all my other persimmon trees and fruit seedfree or close to it, I pruned my Chocolate HARD. I cut almost everything off of it except the small limb that had a few female blooms. I figured it might kill the tree and it did. So I have no report on that tree this year- sorry!

[Seattlefiggirl]

seems as if it likes to change often. it hard to know what to expect. i think it is nice to have some male but i prefer eating fruits. thank you for replying.

[Harbin]

It seems that these monoecious trees tend to produce more pistillate flowers when young and the ratio slowly shifts towards staminate flowers as they get older. So, to rejuvenate the trees from time to time is probably the right way to secure the fruit production.

[thecityman]

That’s been my experience and that was exactly my plan. Problem is I did a little TOO MUCH REJUVENATING! ha. I cut it back too far in too many placed and killed it, but by then I didn’t have much to loose anyway.