Was poking around my emails today and found this picture of JT-02 Mikkusu (black skinned kaki x american persimmon) fruit from Cliff England: https://flic.kr/p/2iNBt2Y
Have also seen it described as orange skin. I’ve heard from several that trees advertised as black skinned turned out as something else without black skin. Asked for black skinned kaki bud wood from Cliff 18 months ago and apparently there was none left after all the freezes in Tennessee in recent years.
Anyone out there actually grown some black skinned kaki fruit?
Cliff told Us some year they are orange and some year they turned black skin due the weather changes. My tree so far produced only orange fruits. My daughter still selling JT-02 cuttings for fundraising. PM me if interested. She still have about 20 cuttings of JT-02 and 20 cuttings of Kasandra left.
I grafted his Huk Gam and it had given me only orange persimmons for several years here. I kept it anyway, the tree is more vigorous than other kakis and seems happier in my orchard. The fruit is fairly standard PCA fruit, average size.
The only variety that i know which actually produces black fruit is the Kuro Gaki. You also see a lot of other varieties being advertised as black or blue fruited varieties (for example huk kam) but actually the blue/black color is created by frost when the fruit isn’t ripe yet or something… I can’t explain it that well but a hobby collector told me something like that and that those fake/not ripe/black fruits are actually the worst fruit quality you can get… I have two Kuro Gaki (those actually get naturally black skin when they ripen even without frost and loosing fruit quality)here in zone 6b but I will wait several years before planting them out in a warm spot.
There is a lady in NJ on Facebook persimmon group that has a black skinned kaki. She and several friends got it from EdibleLandscaping a few years ago. Only trouble it was not what she ordered! I intend to hit her up next winter to get some bud wood just for the novelty!
JT-02 fruits are almost, if not completely, black right now. Most are still rock-hard, but I found a soft one on the ground last week.
Twig girdlers cut out a finger-diameter branch with 8 or so fruits on it a couple of weeks back. I’ve had them in a paper bag with an apple since, and two were soft enough to eat (I haven’t yet, so moved them to the fridge) yesterday.
