The flavor reminds me of certain tropical Ericales— berries.
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I picked a lot of Fuyu fruits from my neighbors tree that broke in half from the weight of the fruits. This tree had over 200 lbs of fruits.
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Unfortunately Fuyu/Jiro does this. It overbears, breaks branches and then hardly bears the next year.
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If I pick mine at that color they will not fully ripen.
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thats more orange than the ones that come here from california
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Perhaps I haven’t eaten enough varieties at their prime to have a fair comparison. I love Triumph and Rojo Brillante, but I can’t grow them in my climate. They are very sweet, juicy and refreshing, but they don’t have unique, sharp flavors like Adriatic and I-258 figs for instance.
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Yes, probably true. But if you look at the bottom side (leaf?), I can usually tell if they will ripen off the tree. If they have mostly light yellow orange color then it will be fine. But if it has no yellow or orange color on this side then it may not ripen on the counter and instead just get softer.
I will report back on the ripening in 3-5 days. I plan to dehydrate most of the fruits that I can’t give away and will use the ones that doesn’t have the color on the bottom end first. I thought I read somewhere that for dehydrating it, the not fully ripe ones will still taste good.
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Yes, persimmons don’t have a sharp or acidic flavor – that is true.
But they compensate with high sweetness and very interesting aroma – butterscotch and rum. In the case of PVNA persimmons, they taste like sapodilla.
Usually the PCNA persimmons are quite boring and I would take most well ripened figs over those.
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Ouch.
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Yes! So amazing to grow something resembling a tropical fruit in the cold winter climate we have here in Pennsylvania without protection.
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A species in the small genus Manilkara, a member of taxonomic order Ericales (Heather).
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Re Kassandra: A slight change of plans . . . Tomorrow is the last day forecasted to exceed 60 F, so I can’t realistically expect warmth to push ripening much more. Then there will be a few nights down near freezing, which may damage the hanging fruit (?). Finally, I can see that leaves are falling quickly so they can’t be contributing anything.
So, I decided to pick most of my Kassandras today. I picked 85, left 8 on the tree just to see how they handle the cold. See the first picture below. Fruits averaged ~42 g, just slightly larger than some H63A picked too. Adding a few other Kassandra fruits that I had already eaten or given to friends makes a total crop ~100 in contrast with the >1200 that I picked last year.
I was hoping that the smaller crop would result in larger and tastier fruit. I did not get larger fruit but I did get tastier. One of the 85 fruits was slightly damaged near the base and had ripened ahead of the rest. See the 2nd picture (ripe fruit on the right). My wife and I ate it. It was tasty and non-astringent.
Our three take-aways were (1) Kassandra was sweeter and tastier than H63A, which we sampled side-by side; (2) Kassandra was definitely very good to eat; and (3) Kassandra’s taste was similar to Saiyo. My wife made this observation unprompted by me. I’m not saying that it was identical – and I need to eat more. But it seems to me that Kassandra provides a high quality PCA Kaki taste in a cold-hardy package.
If you have to choose, I suppose climate would drive the decision. Saiyo seems the better choice for warm weather growers; Kassandra seems the better choice for cold weather growers.
I admit (sheepishly) that I’ve ripened one Saiyo here ever and 3-4 Kassandra’s this year so far. So my sample sizes are really small.
I should add that I don’t think either 1200 fruits or 100 fruits is ideal. Well pruned and properly thinned, something around 300-500 seems sustainable on this modest tree.
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My kassandra graft grew well this year… looking forward to trying those.
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Given your experience plus what I’ve read elsewhere, I’ve decided I won’t be putting my Kassandra in the ground and will use the space for a pure virginiana instead. My parents have a Saijo that produces more than enough for everyone.
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That’s a vote for variety, which I get. Lots of people prefer the flavor of better DV’s to the flavor of Kakis. Let us know which DV name you pick and how it works out for you.
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The flavor of a cultivar can vary by climate. That is why each grower might wish to try multiple cultivars, and in the case of persimmons – cultivars of multiple species and interspecies hybrids.
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