In pure American persimmons, my favorites have been Lehman’s Delight (100-46}, Valene Beauty (I-94), and Prok. All completely hardy here in Zone 6a. Lehman’s Delight bore 20 persimmons on year 2 to grafting to a 2 inch diameter rootstock. Prok has rather mild flavor, and retained astringency in the early years. Valene Beauty is my firmest and reddest virginiana.
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John Gordon told me in an email many years ago when I asked him about the name and origin of Prok that it is kind of an acronym for Persimmon Ralph Krieder. I guess he thought an ‘o’ worked better than an “i”. That was because it was a seedling of Pipher that Ralph discovered in Curro Gordo, IL. Interestingly, Ralph told me that Pipher was actually a grafted tree of some long forgotten variety. They are both large vigorous trees. I have them growing side by side in my orchard. Both have large oblong fruit. If the D. Virginiana sequence gets published, it would be nice to start corroborating and cleaning up the old persimmon lore if further testing is affordable.
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Thanks for digging out these old documents. Always cool to see this sort of thing and recall that at one time a 3 ring binder stuffed with random photocopies might have represented a substantial body of knowledge about a topic as relatively obscure as American persimmons.
If your account is true, would that mean that all of the references to George Slate and Geneva, NY are apocryphal, or was the tree in question grafted in Geneva for breeding purposes? I believe the correct spelling is Pieper, no? I know that John Gordon also distributed a variety called SAA Pieper that is well regarded. The SAA stood for something along the lines of “seedling of…” though I forget now. Might you be confusing this and Prok ? I tried hunting for his old nursery catalog, but can’t find the url. It was a geocities site as I recall. I think someone may have made a mirror of it for reference.
It would be interesting to see how some of the lore shakes out. Stories tend to take on a life of their own, and sometimes facts get a bit glossed over in the process. Not too long ago I accidentally stumbled on a white paper about Japanese mulberry breeding for sericulture and it was apparent to me that the mulberry variety ‘Kokuso’ (properly ‘Kokuso #20) came from this program and was bred entirely for its leaves. Every nursery catalog that sells it describes it as having come from Korea. I don’t know who started the rumor, but it seems to have stuck.
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I’ve heard good things about it. It looks huge and has a nice red color. Apparently a lot of the stuff coming out of Don Compton’s breeding work is pretty impressive. I wish I new more about him and what he is up to. I understand he’s pretty reserved and keeps to himself. Does anyone know more?
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Good questions/points. As far as Pipher and Pieper go, I’m certain they are two different cultivars. Pieper is from Pennsylvania, and Pipher was a rediscovered legacy cultivar found in Illinois. There does appear to have been confusion over the years since they’re names are so similar and people aren’t always the most conscientious about such things. I have a nice blurb on Pieper written by John Gordon somewhere in my library; will try to dig it out when I get home. From what I understand (from emails with John Gordon when he still ran his nursery), SAA Pieper is seedling of Pieper that he grew out. As for George Slate and John Gordon, their efforts were so integrated that I (incorrectly or correctly) pretty much lump them into the same effort as they worked a lot with the same material -even some of the same trees. I have a few decent articles written by George Slate about his persimmons, I’ll post them here when I have a chance to dig them out.
I believe John got Pipher from Ralph, and that John was the one who grew out Prok and Korp. I haven’t tried, but it may be possible to find John’s online catalog through the Wayback Machine archives. Back when I lived in Michigan, I bought a lot of persimmons from him like Prok, Korp, Deerstand, Hess, SAA Pieper, Pieper, NC-10, … Unfortunately, when my workplace shuttered, and I moved to Indiana, the new owner leveled every single persimmon tree in my old persimmon orchard (>60 trees).
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He’s on Facebook and occasionally chimes in on the INFGA Facebook group. He’s got a lot of nice pics of his persimmon work on his page.
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Interesting, thanks for the details. The plot thickens!
As to using archive.org’s waybackmachine, That’s what I was trying to do but it requires knowing the url, which i don’t have on hand. I’m sure somewhere there’s a dead link to it on another ancient webpage. It’s just a matter of finding it. I recall after John Gordon’s passing that someone at NAFEX compiled much of his materials including catalog and various publications. I’m fuzzy on the details though.
Ive never heard anyone talk about Bill Preston… he literally wrote the book on Persimmons. He worked for the USDA and has passed but his persimmon orchard lives on in MD. He worked on over 80 varieties that he got from China, Japan and Korea. So he too was a fruit hunter.
Trees are never sprayed, never fertilized, never watered.
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That book is available for free on archive.org I believe. I have a digital copy sourced there or somewhere.
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U asked about Donald Compton…
A couple of guys on forums and FB have talked about visiting his orchard called Hobo Woods. One guy sells seedlings that Donald gave him which i have called Hobo Woods. Mine are only 2 yrs old so no clue how the fruit will be…supposedly they look like this
https://www.allbiz.com/business/hobo-woods-persimmon-farm-812-723-0099
Hmmm. I clipped this from one of his old emails. There are some old URLs that might help:
John H. Gordon Jr.
1385 Campbell Blvd.
Amherst, NY 14228-1403
(716)691-9371
nuttreegordon@hotmail.com
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos Catalog as by Mail 2006
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos Order Form- Plant List 2006
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos Nursery & Descriptions
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos NYNGA Hardy English Walnuts
Grower of nut, pawpaw & persimmon trees for Western NY climates
Located on NY Rte. 270, 4 mi. north of Rte. 263,
midway between Buffalo & Lockport
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Here are picks of Prok and Pipher from my trees last year. The one with three is Prok, and the singleton is Pipher.
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I actuallly confused the book you suggested, @krismoriah with the old USDA bulletin about American persimmons, which is also a worthwhile read. The native persimmon : Fletcher, W. F : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
I have not read the book “Where Persimmon Was King”. How good a read is it?
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@parkwaydrive – Great looking fruit.
My apologies if I’ve asked you this before . . . . Are you able to get Prok totally non-astringent? I couldn’t, even if I left the fruit on the tree well into November. FYI, the first ripe fruit came in late Sept. It wasn’t just my taste buds that complained. Persimmon tannins seriously retard intestinal motility, with predictable adverse consequences.
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@jrd51
Here in Wv.
My Prok usually ripen in late August - September. By November they are all gone / done . Must be very soft to be not astringent.
If yours stay on the tree into November, maybe you don’t have the true Prok ?
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That’s always a possibility. I bought it from Stark’s in 2015. My growing season is probably shorter than yours so I’m not surprised it’s at least a couple weeks later.
Currently I’m trying Barbra’s Blush, H63A, Dollywood, and Morris Burton. The first three were grafted two years ago and are now showing flowers, which appear at least 3-4 days from opening. Maybe I’ll get to see how those do.
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@jrd51
My apology, I may have more accumulated heat , ( degree days ?)
Or said another way , you may not have a long enough season to ripen Prok so that it loses all astringency?
I tried to look up / compare the season accumulation of degree days of Bristol Rhode Island compared to Charleston West Virginia with no luck . Should be easy to find , but I could not.
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