Your 2025 choices for D. virginiana cultivars?

Great point. I missed (or forgot) this. What was the low winter temp?

From J. Gordon’s advice to Ontario growers:

  • Yates [aka Juhl] is a winner.
  • Geneva Long … retains texture after ripe for about a week. … It is mid October ripening.
  • Szukis (pronounced Sue kiss) is a bi-sexual persimmon which yields early pollen and fruit. It is early ripe like Yates … you need one male tree to produce good [American] persimmons (seeded fruit are 20% larger)
  • Intercrop with black walnut
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Is there a consensus on this? I get that seeded fruit will be bigger, but isn’t that mainly because they contain seeds? Anyway I know many growers who assiduously banish male DV trees because they prefer seedless fruit. Mine have been seedless.

I will say that the hybrid Kasandra fruit seems better when seeded. Not bigger, just tastier. The pollinator was a PVNA Kaki, which might matter.

… among growers in upstate NY and Ontario?

In my opinion they are lazy. There are inexpensive kitchen tools to relieve that circumstance.

I can vouch that in my climate, Fuyu is far better tasting (fresh) when fertilized. Dehydrated slices of seedless fruit comes in second.

No. In general.

I see that your message starts out addressed to Ontario growers (or maybe anybody within 90 miles :slight_smile: ).

But it’s not clear whether the advice that “you need one male tree” is intended for Ontario or all the rest of us. If you meant it only for Canadians, just say so to clarify.

It’s not my advice. It is from my post of John Gordon’s book that kinghat acknowledged.

Based on breeding tests, it seems that Fuyu carrys one PVNA allele. It seems very possible to me that seeds in Fuyu benefit from fertilization due to its PVNA genetics.

But also, I acknowledged that Kasandra tastes better when seeded, at lest here where my pollinator is PVNA. The questions are (1) does this benefit generalize across all Kakis for all pollinators (e.g., is a Fuyu pollinated by Taishu better?); (2) does this benefit depend on the pollinator; (3) does this benefit generalize to Americans?

I’ve no idea.

My quote of J. Gordon above was specific to kinghat’s question about viability in his location.

My only exposure to the D. virginiana literature has been through investigations of D. virginiana (a) cultivar ancestries, and (b) DNA restriction endonucleases.