Little John, I am not going to HOS this year. I'll ask someone I met last year for Medlars for you. There were 4-5 varieties last year, they should be back again. I have a Sasafras growing and I saved it in case you want one. They are native here. I am going to Florida for fruit tasting in May and Maine for blueberry festival in August. I would like to swing over to Sebastopol for a fruit walk in Andy Marianis orchard. Jasonlotp, San Martin Mulberry was found growing west of LA if I remember right. Probably both local seedling selections.

Chills: My three Asian persimmons, planted bareroot in spring, 2007, have continued to grow all summer long. I don't know how much of the newer growth will make it through the winter, but if some doesn't will just prune it off as Gene suggests. I don't know what I would do about it if I wanted to stop it. BTW, I had some leaf curling on the trees earlier in the summer, and one spray with permethrin from a hand trigger sprayer stopped it completely, whatever it was. May have been the persimmon psylla that bothers Scottsmith. If it was, I sure can't see it. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I went to a tasting event at One Green World here in OR Saturday. I also collected Am persimmons at the Home oRchard society arboretum. I have to say that I noticed a distinct difference in flavor among the Americans in my climate. Early Golden is kind of the standard. Very good. Solid complete rum and butterscotch flavor. Here Ruby is much larger, and more subtle and smooth, almost creamy. Meader has not as deep of a flavor, still good though. I feel like Garretson has the most complete flavor profile of the ones I've tasted. It kind of zings and gives me that out there experience that is home grown food at its greatest. Just my opinion based on the ones I've tasted in my climate. John S PDX OR

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.