As I do not get a lot of time to read all I would Like when I do I find some very interesting commits and I am thankful We do have many persimmons available this year and others we are sold out of but this coming season we will have a large selection to choose from as we will have some many root stock that it will take the majority of the farm trees scion wood to graft all the root stock we will have . Many new and exciting cultivars will be introduced and some for the first time cultivars such as Kasandra , Sistroyonka = big sister and a few that are so large and hardy that you would swear they are Kaki Last winter was a very hard one for us as the winter temps reach minus 23.4 Celsius or -11 degrees F and we lost 268 grafted Kaki trees there are some survivors like Korea Kaki, Inchon, Vaniglia, , CHinibel, Miss Kim, Shan Xi, Orest, and Chibacha that had not winter injury at all look forward to talking with all of you Cliff England

The breeding efforts for American persimmon are proceeding along two different tracks - one to produce clear and plentiful pulp primarily for pudding but also for a number of other products and the other for fresh eating. It is for this second purpose that breeders are seeking larger sized fruit. Part of the reason is the aesthetics or visual appeal of the fruit. While small fruits in groups can be visually appealing, this quality is diminished when the individual fruits are isolated, and the delicate nature of persimmon skin requires they be to prevent damage. Picture an isolated grape...can make you just want to throw it away as residue. Part of the reason is to offset the presence of seeds and increase the pulp to seed ratio. It means more edible fruit for the work of eating. This is a dessert fruit after all and the going needs to be easy! Part of the reason is the paradigm set by the persimmon's very successful Asian brother. Comparison to the kaki, a major player in world markets, naturally has the breeder questioning, "why can't you be like your brother?" and so seeks a larger fruit.

Thanks for posting the photos, they are beautiful. I really like yates as it is large, good tasting and quick to lose astringency however I have yet to taste an American persimmon that has the same quality as early golden. While it may not be the largest fruited variety out there it still is good sized and with fewer seeds than most others and at least in my climate is one of the most attractive fruits. It is also quick to lose astringency. I have not tried any of Lehmans varieties (nor prok) but have tried dollywood and elmo. For whatever reason I find that dollywood and elmo are very slow to lose astringency and they still retain some when 1st gathered from the ground. It may have something to do with my NC, zone 7 climate though this doesnt make sense to me. If anything I would think that they would lose astringency sooner in a hotter climate. Early golden, yates, and ruby will never have any traces of astringency when they drop from the tree in my experience.

I've seen some older virginiana growing on virginiana rootstock both in dense plantings and in wide open spaces and most were in the 20 - 30 foot range. These were all in the Northeast and perhaps under different conditions in different locations they would grow taller. In any case they can be pruned to a shorter height if desired. I've grafted virginiana to both kaki and lotus and they grow and fruit well on each. I would expect that a kaki rootstock would have some dwarfing effect on the tree, but with the risk of various problems down the road, I don't think it would be wise to recommend kaki over virginiana rootstock for this application. I believe texana has the same number of chromosomes as the southern virginianas, but I haven't heard of any hybrids between the two. Prok and Yates have an additional set of chromosomes, so they would be incompatible. These varieties don't appear to require any specific trigger to induce fruiting, so I would doubt that having no local wild virginiana would pose a cropping problem.