Anyone try turkey lake american persimmon yet? Anyone try it out further north?
@jeremymillrood have you seen it in person or tasted it by chance? If it is pure american there is a good chance it can survive a much colder climate. There is only one way to find out.
As you know there are the 60 and 90 chromosome American D.V. The 60 chromosome southern persimmon will not survive in my location. Well, they will survive, but the trunks will split and they will regrow from the ground. They do that even in non-extreme winters (for my location), so getting into the -5F to -10F area they have problems. Would it have similar hardiness to JT-02 for example? Idk. For 1.5" fruit, which is small compared to a number of the named northern varieties, I wouldn’t take the chance even if it’s some sort of magical candy.
Is that true of all 60 and 90 chromosome types? In my experience many persimmons like eatly golden do fine here.If nothing else a southern persimmon might be useful to a lot of people in florida etc…
Early golden is a 90 chromosome northern variety found NE of St Louis.
Pomper et al 2019 - Ploidy Level in American Persimmon.pdf (404.6 KB)
I’m sure some 60 chromosome from the northern parts of their range could do better than the ones I had which came from GA, but ones from FL would just about assuredly do no better. I’ve heard of similar reports of people who have tried 60 chromosome rootstock in the north.
I am in southern middle TN and based on that location I should have southern persimmons 60C.
In the 1980s these temps were recorded at the Nashville airport.
1982 -11F
1983 -5F
1984 -5F
1985 -17F
1989 -10F
I remember those years well… there was no massive die off or damage of any native wild persimmon trees.
Could there be a difference in a native Florida wild persimmon and a native Tennessee wild persimmon.
This was the typical scene for the 60 chromosome GA persimmon with the trees/bark splitting. Not sure if I should call them GA native persimmon but that’s there they were mailed from. The cold never killed them, but they would routinely split like this and die back and try to regrow. It was an annual event, although some would make it through some winters occasionally. Was it the lows, or the extreme swings in temp, or both? Either way, it’s not worth my time to worry about. They’ve gone to the great fireplace in the sky. The northern rootstock will handle -30F at least with no issues under similar circumstances.
Steve Breyer at Tripple Brook Nursery just an hr + south of me has a number of mature bearing 60 chromosome (tetraploid) persimmons. Im fairly certain he grafted them to 90 chromosome rootstock. If anyone is looking for tetraploid cultivars, he’d be a good person to talk to.
I sure hope you’re right about the -30 tolerance
