@parkwaydrive ? any idea on I-84A or any of jrd51’s other questions about claypool’s ratings?
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The only one I know is Valeene Beauty (I-94)
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Adding to the confusion – For I-94, the document reports a “10” rating for taste, a “9” for sugar, and a 77 overall. But the last comment is “BLAND.” WTF???
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Those ratings and comments may have been over the course of many years in which some years were better than others or his thoughts changed on varieties. Your taste and his may also be very different. I gave my I-94 away and wish I had held onto a few scions of it as it was a late ripening variety. Trying to find Jons Pride to replace it.
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OK, I assume that your explanation is speculative. That would be an argument that the Claypool ratings are not “apples to apples.” As these trees were all growing in the same location, the main variables would be (1) the age of the tree; (2) the cultural practices each season, such as fertilization; (3) the weather; and even (4) location (e.g., air circulation and sun exposure) on the same tree. Anything else?
Given the ratings, it seems that the variation in performance due to such factors would appear to be enormous. For example, H-63A, which is widely recognized as one of the best names, rates a “5” for sweetness, whereas a dozen unknowns rate 7 to 10. And D-128 (Dollywood), which is described in the comments as having “good flavor, very sweet,” nevertheless earns “4” on both sugar and taste. Presumably these poor numeric ratings came in an especially bad year (or years)?
If this explanation is correct, it means that these ratings are almost useless. Ditto almost ANY ratings. In particular, it would be a warning that we should never accept negative ratings of an American persimmon named variety as proof of anything. Positive ratings, of course, show how well a variety is capable of performing under ideal conditions. But negative ratings might always imply nothing more than an immature tree, poor care, poor weather conditions, and/or poor location of a fruit on a tree.
I hope your explanation is wrong but I fear that it is right. I have always felt that we are way too quick to discard a variety because one guy in one location in one season dislikes the fruit that he grew. These ratings suggest that we need to expend less energy on searching for “Improved American Persimmons” and way more energy on understanding the role of “nurture” in American persimmon performance.
How about a new thread, “Who’s Using Improved American Persimmon Cultural Practices?”
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My suspicion is persimmon are similar to pears.
In pears certain fruits like my small yellow pear or even harrow sweet are sweeter than 95% of all pears sold in the store. My small yellow pear ripens early, blooms late, tastes much better than other pears. I should mention more than 50% of the time those yellow pears taste terrible. They dont keep more than days. They will not transport. They are the best tasting pear of all time but have no.commercial value. Consider very tiny persimmons like deer candy may be sweeter on a brix scale than 100-46 but the 100-46 is the keeper of the two. Sweetness is important but has little value in comparison to other attributs such as size, dependability, seedless, texture, color etc. I’m not saying i know anything about these persimmons only speculating on why a c100 or deer candy may never be a commercial variety and 100-46 100-47, 100-45, 100-43, 100-42 all have potential as commercial fruit. Notice the persimmons that were trademarked were the h series prarie dawn, prarie star, etc.
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Those are all good points. Note, though, that while I focused on the scores for sugar and taste, the same issue arises with other metrics. For example, H63A scores “6” on black spots in flesh, whereas every persimmon in the I-90’s scores “10.” Similarly, H63A scores “3” on skin, whereas the I-90’s score “6” or “7.” And I thought my H63A’s have pretty nice skin.
p.s. Prairie Gem is F-25 and Prairie Sun is A-33.
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Perhaps the rating system is backwards. A 1 being the best and a 10 being the worst.
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That’s not what the attached notes say.
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Think about it. How hard would it be to grade a hundred varieties. There would be tons of inconsistencies. How do you compare a variety against a fruit 50 varieties ago. I’m betting he struggled with that list. Most likely they are all very good, but just did not get distributed for one reason or another. Doubtful there are any lost varieties that are significantly better than the ones on the market.
I chose most of my varieties based on the opinions of other GF members. Really that’s about the best you can do when choosing, unless you have access to taste tons of them.
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According to the notes, these ratings reflect evaluations by Jim Claypool and by “many members” of the Indiana Nut Growers Association. INGA participation reportedly began around 1991 and continued through 2005, when this compilation was prepared.
On one hand, the number of evaluators creates huge potential heterogeneity. Some evaluators may be easy graders, some tough.
On the other hand, the number of evaluators creates the opportunity for multiple assessments of each variety over many seasons. You’d think that this would give the reported assessments some added reliability.
All that said, I notice that the extreme variability of these ratings applies not only to relatively subjective measures such as “sugar” and “taste” but also to more objective measures such as “seed” (i.e., seediness).
I’m coming to the conclusion that the answer to my 1st question is that the ratings are not “apples to apples.” There is extreme variability in the standards applied. I have no idea why. Possibly Rows I and J were rated only (or mainly) by a single member of the INGA with extremely generous grading.
That said, my other questions are still important: Where are these highly rated varieties now? I’d love to test some crosses that were good enough to lead at least one rater to assign nearly straight 10s.
I suppose I’m also curious whether anyone else has asked these questions in the nearly 20 years since the ratings were compiled.
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Hypothetically. Lets say he added 1 or 2 new rows each year. Later when they were fruiting people tasted all of the fruit from the latest rows to fruit. That kind of lends to your theory and explains why the grading changed so much. When it was all said and done he had some requirements he used to release them and most did not make the cut no matter what their rankings in the row were. The only way you will ever know is to contact someone involved.
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This is more or less my feeling on the matter. Quantitative data has an air of authority and impartiality that I tend to think is misguided. While its true that larger data sets will tend to show fewer of these aberrations, lets not forget that they are nothing more than an agglomeration if people’s subjective impressions. Those are subject to any number of influences, and its unlikely that a rigorous standard was universally applied across the board. Even in cases where those efforts are genuinely made, any number of other unperceived influences could easy be at play. The inconsistencies you’ve pointed out are pretty striking nonetheless
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Im also generally of the thinking to give my trees plenty of time and chances to perform. Though there are definitely species and varieties that dont make the grade, I try to sort those beforehand in the selection process. Mother nature does her own selection: as anyone who’s tried knows, getting a tree established and bearing is hard work. Once a tree has made it over the hump, I give it every chance to satisfy me, even taking into account my own likes/dislikes and making an intentional effort to be flexible in that regard. Its said that when a young child tries a new food, they often don’t like it without repetition. Plus, variations in traits prove advantageous in ways that might not be immediately obvious, especially if someone has rigid expectations, such as the fruit needing to taste good put of hand the once or twice they happened to have tried it. As @clarkinks hints at, the thick skinned one may be the “keeper” or the dry mealy one may be the “baker” or the “fruit leather” type. There are as many possibilities as we can imagine, and those often are at least as broad as the actual genetic diversity we’re observing.
In the event that a variety is a total dud, Ill gladly topwork it rather than cut it down, tear it out, etc. To each their own, but Ive known many to rush towards something of the sort, which Ive always thought was pretty rash and senseless.
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Re: The need to try things several times, I think this is really important for American persimmon because their flavor just doesn’t compare to many fruits people are familiar with. My dad’s first reaction was that it was very strange, nothing like Kaki, but wanted to keep eating them to figure it out.
I’ve only ever had Meader and a bunch of wild ones (some quite good!) but to me the closest comp to a fully ripe Virginiana isn’t a Kaki but instead the fresh yellow dates you can occasionally find at Middle Eastern or Asian groceries (I think these are barhi?) – astringent until ripe but caramel-honey richness in that brief window between soft and rotten!
My story about Prok, and don’t give up too quick, and the previous expert discussion about ratings. I’m a farm raised Kentuckian and grew up eating native persimmons. I had the trees identified. This one is early, has dark flesh. and tastes like dates. This one is ripe next , has light flesh and tastes like good pumpkin, etc. They were one inch, full of seeds and splatted when they hit the ground. Then I retired and four years ago, my friend taught me how to graft, and supplied me with Prok scion for practice. So everything persimmon, around me was now Prok, and I couldn’t wait. I even counted them on the twigs. Man! Two inchers, seedless, beautiful light golden in color. Oh boy!
As they turned orange, then fell off, and I ate them, I had to rush right in and brush my teeth. Then go back to my native trees for the fix.
Complained to my 75 mile away neighbor, Cliff England, at the local nut tree meeting. “Don’t give up too quick”, he advised.
Then I bought his persimmons at the Berea farmers market. H63A. As good as it gets. The best ever. 100-46. Amazing. But you all know all of this.
And I go home to my Proks. Astringent forever. I attend Cliff’s open house. Some delectable persimmons, were Prok crosses with ? something. ( my hearing is going ,too)
Fall of '23. I take Proks in after they fall off and let them languish on the kitchen counter top. They get better.
Then for some reason, three or four don’t drop. Seem stuck by their calyx to the twig. We have three or four frosts. It’s actually Thanksgiving. They get all shriveled. Best damn persimmons I ever ate.
So I have two points. One. Even if the persimmon has faults, it can be used to improve the breed, by crossing and saving its positive qualities. Two. Its very important how we handle the fruit, as it ripens. Thanks
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Ive had the same experience with Prok. Mine were terrible for years. One of my two Prok trees still tends towards blander more watery fruit, and the scion for the one came right off the other! Some years my Prok has held its fruit into winter and I agree, they’re excellent when that happens. One thing Ive noticed is it’s always seeded Prok fruits that hold. Other than that, I don’t have it figured. Good perspective. Thanks
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Hokkaido. Cliff is ostensibly crossing a number of D.v. cultivars with ‘Hokkaido’ D.kaki (maybe others, as well?).
I picked up scions of some of his putative hybrids at KNGA meeting, but don’t think I got a take of any of them.
I’ve read a lot of mixed reports on Prok here. Seems like lots of folks are reporting lingering astringency or very watery fruit. I wonder if there are a few different Proks in circulation or if Prok is just very sensitive to different growing conditions, many of which might be hard to put a finger on.
I got my Prok scions from The Garden Pharmacy/Taylor Yowell. A 4 foot tall tree last year bore 9 persimmons last year, all nice sized. We were pretty dry last summer and the tree got no supplemental watering. Fruits dropped early and had zero astringency. Definitely mild flavored, but pleasant for sure. Year before last I pruned off a few fruits off of it because we were in a pretty bad drought. Hopefully a half dozen more varieties will bear this year, but Prok is very popular at my house for the time being.
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You and I have the same “Prok”
Early dropping, no astringency.
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