Sexing Persimmons

[clarkinks]

Let’s say you plant 100 seedlings out of any type it let’s you know what your keeping, grafting over etc… the best varieties we have now of kaki x American hybrids had to be sexed to determine if your grafting now or waiting for fruit. Some need a male and in which case you need to sex the trees to make sure you have pollen.

[forestandfarm]

That makes sense, but those are seedlings, not named varieties. I understand sexing seedlings if you are trying to come up with something new. You and Tony said that NG was female. I’m primarily familiar with American persimmons and Tony was nice enough to get me started with some NGs. Every named variety that I’m aware of is female or perfect (having both male and female branches). I was just wondering if there was something different with Kaki or something I was unaware of with American where someone had for some reason had a named variety of male.

[clarkinks]

Some persimmons are both male and female as your aware which you don’t want if you have a seedless persimmon because you will get seeds. Now I think most of us know that about seeds so I’m referring to breeding primarily in regards to sexing persimmons. Some people may not realize Nikita’s gift is female. @Barkslip may be able to eleborate a bit on some of the newer varieties that are seedless. I’m grafting early golden to my persimmons which is delicious but if you have seedless persimmons they won’t remain seedless with that variety in your orchard. Early Golden is not a seedless type but it ripens in September and it’s cold hardy making it a good fit for my orchard. The lotus persimmons had no problem this year surviving zone 6. We got down to -10F this winter so I will use some of the males as experimental rootstock. They were not that cold hardy when they were younger. When persimmon are produced without a male the term is called parthenogenetically and you can read more about that here http://www.gb-online.co.uk/gb-wordpress/?p=1511. Lotus is a fascinating persimmon because it produces predominately male trees https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjshs1/83/3/83_CH-109/_html/-char/en. If you want to study persimmons lotus is a good place to start https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/science/what-determines-the-sex-of-a-persimmon.html

[forestandfarm]

Very interesting! Thanks for the post!

[JesseS]

I read that seedling persimmons will be male 75% of themtime, is that true?

[thecityman]

somewhere around 2 years ago (that could be 1-3 years back with my memory) someone here did an amazing video review of a BUNCH of persimmons. They showed all the different fruits, talk about the taste, showed them cut open, etc. I’ve done some searches here but I just can’t find it. I remember it well- the reviewer had large numbers (varieties and counts) of persimmons in boxes and laid out. Anyone know who did that or better yet, what the link is to the post? Thanks

UPDATE/EDIT - Thanks to a nice person emailing me I found the link…turns out it was @strudeldog and here is that great review if you want to see a lot of different persimmons:

Persimmon Sampler 10-28-2017

Picked the majority of my remaining Persimmon and as Saturday was a coldish rain all day decided to lay some out and review and compare. I still have some at my cabin location and thinking the freeze tonight will not be significant enough to damage them. A few trees have me pondering why they did not produce as well or at all this year, a couple unknowns getting looked at real close, but proving tough for positive identification. I got to try some new ones this year, and better samplings of oth…

[misoo83]

How to identify male and female asian persimmon flowers .

[clarkinks]

@JesseS
Lotus will have a higher percentage of males than that but it all depends on their genetics. A friend down the road has persimmons that all get 50 feet plus in height and they are all females around there naturally.never saw a male in the area. Never saw him eat a persimmon without leaf smashed in it since they splat when they hit the ground.
@misoo83
Great short video explaining flowers thoroughly. Thank you for posting that.
@thecityman
Yes that is a fantastic video! @strudeldog knows his stuff! @Barkslip , @tonyOmahaz5 and many other experts in the field really know their persimmons far better than I do. There are others on here planting large amounts of persimmons this year! In 5 - 10 years their will be hundreds of acres of persimmon only orchards.
@Barkslip
You said “ They get big. I liked from Lehman’s orchard: H-63A, 100-46, & 100-42 the most.”
Those are gorgeous fruit! If they taste like they look and I’m sure they do those will be widely grown before we know it! I initially missed your post Dax!

[thecityman]

Funny you mention that, Clark. I just posted on another thread that I am thinking about REALLY getting into persimmons (astringents for me). They are easy to grow and my first Saijo last year just blew my mind it was so good!!! So I’m thinking of planting a whole lot of astringents…the only thing about multi-acre astringent persimmons and/or commercial sales (not something I’d do either way but I hope others do) is that I would think you’d have to pick them so early in order for them to hold up to shipping that I bet the taste would be compromised a lot? Also, other than fresh eating and drying, I haven’t seen many recipes for cooking with them. If folks can overcome shipping issues and find ways to use them besides fresh eating (since fresh eating requires they all be used immediately) then I’d think persimmons may have a very strong future?

[clarkinks]

It may be like the date & fig market. Who knows Persimmon Newton’s May show up in a store near us soon lol! The tomato sized kakis feel pretty firm when they show up here. Should be really interesting when we see 5 types of persimmons at the farmers market! Posts like this are just the beginning and we all learn more everyday. @mkon_at first pointed out the mail flowers to me of lotus Lotus persimmon buds and from that I learned. I’ve been around persimmons most of my life and incorrectly assumed the lotus persimmon had smaller buds because they are smaller fruit and the cream colored bells were naturally female flowers but that is an amateurs mistake. I should have known from observing male American persimmons it’s the same thing and the male flowers look nearly identical. Well that was years ago and I was the only one I know in several states around here growing lotus persimmons as an experiment. Growing out seedlings takes lots of time.

[Hillbillyhort]

My farm has a lot of native persimmons.
When I first got here I found I could tell older male from female trees by the angle of the branches, more or less.
The female trees had branches that had been bent down by the weight of the fruit. , males more upright.
Some of the older trees bear so heavy that some fold up like a umbrella.
To the point of breaking the tops out of some.
If I would leave a stip un mowed in the fields often persimmon would grow there from wild seed.
I have grafted many of these to good varietys.and am starting many more.
For many years they were trouble free.
Now I have the spotted wing d… Fruit fly that ruins the fruit. ( except for sweet lent )
All my Bering age trees are American P.
I am starting some Asians,
Wonder if people are having problems with fruit flys on Asians ?

[clarkinks]

Yes I think we have a tendency to rely on what works for us but we are not normally really paying attention to another way of doing things. There must be netting or a coating to spray on fruit eg. Surround to deter the spotted wing drosophila. I wish there was a spotted wing drosophila eating bird we could attract!!!

[forestandfarm]

I’m not sure if that is true on not in general, but in my anecdotal experience it sure seems to be the case. I have native trees growing on my farm an for every female tree I find, I find at least three and maybe four males.

[Arhus76]

Some grafts of the year. Female flower on JBT06 and kavkaz.

[Barkslip]

Awesome dude.

Really great growth.

Dax

[Arhus76]

In general, when it grows well I get 2 or 3 meters of foam in the year.
Here are 2 trees grafted in 2017 and the root was sown in 2016. (Rosseyanka and chocolatino)
The spade leaves from the end of the roots.

[Barkslip]

Excellent soil + marvelous roots.

Dax

[Arhus76]

Diospyros Lotus

[JesseS]

Feeling pretty good about this seedling, female right? Now I just need it to be self fertile…

[JesseS]

FYI, my seedlings survived -25F unprotected…toughies! From Oikos, so I assume that they are from selected parents.