Wanted to share this here since it might be a useful anecdote. There’s some mention online of persimmons being late to leaf out after the stress of bare root transport, but this case seems pretty extreme. I was about to dig it out and replace it but saw some fresh root growth so I left it for another few weeks and it’s finally waking up. This is a coffeecake persimmon (nishimura wase) on D. lotus. Planted bare root in early Feb and it’s now just beginning to wake up in mid June.
For some context I’m in a relatively warm California 9b climate. Many trees are leafing out and blooming by March here, and by now with cherry season just ending most everything else has put on 1-2ft of new growth.
Yes, welcome to the forum. Love the handle btw. Your experience doesn’t surprise me. I’m in Vermont, so time scale needs to be adjusted accordingly, but I’ve seen persimmons leaf out in August here. I’ve mentioned this to a couple of friends who have attended to graft bare root persimmons in spring. In my experience, until they put roots down, they’re apt to sit there while the scion withers
Welcome to the forum!
First year bare root persimmon can take a long time. @Vincent_8B had a persimmon that didn’t even leaf out for a season and then grew normally next year.
@gibberellin, welcome to the forum, and I second that you selected a great name.
Just yesterday I was looking at my bronze muscadine vines that arrived as bare-root plants in November and were planted into pots immediately. I had kept meaning to email the vendor to tell them that one of the Tara had never come out of dormancy, despite the fact that seven other vines I had ordered from them were doing fine. Imagine how surprised I was to finally see the sprouting of new growth coming directly from the roots, many many months after the other vines had begun pushing leaves.
It took some deer damage before I finally got the whole area fenced and deer-proof, but it’s recovered nicely and after a year of training and branch spreading it might not even be misshapen forever! Had to thin the fruit by about half this year since last year it broke some branches under it’s own weight.
So in the persimmon category I have:
Chocolate (from Trees of Antiquity) - PVA (though I think it should self-pollinate efficiently to nearly always be NA)
Coffeecake (Dave Wilson) - PVNA (though some sources say “astringent until ripe”)
Fuyu Jiro (Dave Wilson) - PCNA
I’m mentioning the source because there seem to be some variations sold under the names “Chocolate” and “Jiro”.
I don’t have any true astringent types (PCA), the flavor is great but I don’t love the really gooey texture enough to necessarily want to eat them in quantity. If I had space to add one more persimmon (there’s always room for one more tree!) what should I add? Maybe another great PV variety to take advantage of the Chocolate as a pollinizer?
Not sure how they’ll behave in your zone, but my parents have Chocolate and Coffeecake at their house in coastal SoCal, and Chocolate consistently flowers too late to pollinate Coffeecake. Their Chocolate also tends to open its female flowers before the majority of the males and doesn’t pollinate itself super well either. Their trees are still small, however, and they may synch up better as they get larger.
Even with adequate pollination, my experience with persimmons in the Central Valley has been that you will usually get enough under- or nonpollinated PVNA fruit to satisfy your astringent-until-soft-ripe persimmon needs.
If you have space for another tree or want to graft another variety on to an existing tree, a well-pollinated California Maru (different from Zenji Maru) is hands-down the best Asian persimmon I have ever tried, and I have tried many persimmon varieties.
It is Jiro. In fact relatively few Fuyu were imported to the U.S., and only to CA over 100 years ago. They did not work out very well and so the importation of Jiro began. But retailers did not want to confuse consumers and so the Jiro trees were labeled Fuyu. All nursery stock trees in the U.S. labeled “Fuyu” are believed to have originated from USDA Jiro labeled “Fuyu” at the time.
Interesting, thanks for weighing in, Richard! Some great info here.
@GrapeNut Do you know a good source of California Maru? I’m guessing the Dave Wilson “Maru” is likely California Maru? At least I can be pretty sure it’s not “Chocolate” since they carry that variety as well. But in other places I sometimes see Maru and Chocolate used interchangeably.
One Green World makes a distinction between Chocolate and Maru in this article stating that
Though many sources, including us in the past, have said that Chocolate was synonymous with Maru, the folks at Dave Wilson Nursery have enlightened us to the fact that they are two distinct varieties. Both have brown flesh, (only when pollinated in the case of Maru), so this is likely what has led to the confusion.
But then they also link to this NPR article that conflates the two again:
One of them is the maru, or chocolate persimmon — so called because when you bite into a ripe one, the flesh inside is brown, like chocolate.
According to this UCANR source, as you pointed out there are at least three different varieties here with similar characteristics:
Zenji Maru
California Maru = PI83790 (hilariously this one was apparently also labeled as “Jiro” at one point)
Chocolate
As an aside the description of Jiro in that UCANR article all but confirms Richard’s point that the plant I got labeled as “Fuyu (Jiro)” from Dave Wilson is a true “Jiro”:
Leaves of Jiro trees, more so than Fuyu leaves, appear chlorotic in the early spring, especially after a cold, wet winter.
You can see the chlorotic leaves in the picture I posted above and we did indeed have an unusually wet 2022-2023 winter.
I remember reading that the Dave Wilson Maru is the CA Maru but can’t recall where. The fruit in the photo certainly looks correct. I bought one two years ago hoping it’s the CA Maru but haven’t gotten any fruit yet. I used to have access to the UC persimmon grove at Wolfskill, where I first tried CA Maru. If you are in the Bay Area, Annie’s Annuals usually carries Maru from Dave Wilson as part of their usual bare root fruit tree selection.
It seems like Chocolate was used generically to refer to any PVNA persimmon in the past. What is commonly sold as Chocolate today is quite distinct from other PVNAs and has much darker flesh than the others when well pollinated.
It may not be important but lotus can be very late to leaf out. In Kansas mine began to push growth like yours about 2-3 weeks ago. Today is June 15th.
Yes good point, based on the images these all seem to have the same elongated shape. Though in the UCANR image the skin is quite red compared to the other two.
Summarizing my take-aways here in case someone comes across this thread in the future and has the same questions:
(1) UCANR Chocolate reference from CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE, JULY-AUGUST 1988:
…in contrast to the deeper red color of Zenji Maru shown by UCANR:
I reached out to Dave Wilson to see if they are willing to confirm the likely California Maru identity of the one they label as just “Maru”. Will update here if they respond.
No response yet from Dave Wilson. But I did find that Fruitwood nursery offers this description on their scion wood page for CA Maru:
This is the Maru variety sold by Dave Wilson Nursery and is known as the California Maru. A great pollination variant variety it is of best quality if pollinated by Chocolate or another good pollen producing variety. Medium small fruit is of excellent quality and has brown streaked flesh when pollinated.
So rather than wait any longer I went for it and got myself a Dave Wilson Maru. Thanks for the suggestion @GrapeNut !
I was able to find one at Damanakis Nursery in Castro Valley - a low key nursery with a decent fruit tree selection and pretty good prices ($60 for a potted fully leafed out persimmon).
That must have been where I read that DW Maru is CA Maru.
At the risk of overselling this variety, it really is one of the best persimmon varieties when well-pollinated. It makes most edible-when-firm persimmons seem bland and boring and doesn’t have the grainy texture that some other PVNAs like Hyakume can have.
My 1st year Giant Fuyu and Coffee Cake woke up a couple weeks ago, and recently my 3rd year suruga woke up. My first year Jiro Fuyu is showing bud swell and my first year chocolate is still dormant.
Coffeecake is definitely the slowest this year too, but buds are turning green. Fuyu Jiro, Chocolate, and California Maru are ahead and all leafing out already.
I used a 3d printer- not efficient for mass production but good enough for the ~100 labels I have. They’re printed with PETG plastic which has held up in full sun really well.
