Persimmon fields forever
October 9, 2024, would have been John Lennon’s 84th birthday. He and his bandmates sang to us about strawberries, onions, peace, mothers, submarines and the universe but never about persimmons. So let us sing about persimmons.
Truth is important and persimmons are berries, and this is persimmon season on my rocky hillside. At least seven native American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) trees are growing nearby, and two are mature enough to fruit. Don’t eat ‘til after frost or you’ll pay a bitter cost (I made that up). The fruit are loaded with tannins which make persimmons astringent and almost unpalatable until they are mature or softened by a frost.
Fuyu persimmons are non-astringent because they have far less tannin content which fades as the season progresses. They are light orange with an oblate shape and are native to Japan as are many other varieties. Persimmons have been cultivated in China and nearby cultures for more than two millennia, and Asian countries are still the primary producers of persimmons. China in 2022 churned out 3.3 million tons of persimmons, more than half the world’s total.
Nevertheless, D. virginiana is native to the southern part of our country and as far north as Pennsylvania over to hills in Indiana.
Persimmon farmers in California, Texas and Florida prefer Fuyus because they are already sweet and easier to sell. More than 9000 tons of Fuyus are produced in California annually. Non-grafted trees of all varieties take at least four years to bear fruit, and trees are usually dioecious, meaning male and female flowers grow on separate trees, but not always.
According to Ozark folklore, the white shape you see on the kernel inside the persimmon seed predicts the kind of winter weather you can expect. If it’s shaped like a spoon, that means plenty snow-shoveling up ahead. A fork shape indicates a mild winter. A knife shape is an omen for bitter cold. I harvested a low-hanging berry just to see because why not. I pried open the seed and found the white shape of a palm tree on the kernel. Did I do it wrong? Am I going to Kauai? I like Kauai.
A Korean legend holds that persimmons, or at least dried ones, scare away tigers, and so far, I’ve had persimmons on my property but no tigers.
The persimmons I get here are almost always less than two inches in diameter. In Sonoma County, Calif., persimmon trees are common, and the berries are bigger than small apples. To my chagrin, the naturally occurring specimens in the wild bear astringent fruit. There was an old persimmon tree near downtown Petaluma that produced heavily each autumn, and cedar waxwings would gather to gorge themselves. More than once, I came upon an individual that had flown away happy and inebriated straight into a large store window. So, add that to the list of why it’s hard to be a bird.
Persimmons must fully ripen for the tannins to fade and the sweetness to dominate. If you harvest them early, you can try to facilitate ripening by putting them in a bag with an apple or ripe banana for a couple days. Leaving them on the tree ‘til after a cold, cold night hastens ripening but also leaves them out there for squirrels, raccoons and a bunch of hungry birds.
Folks like us in Indonesia soak persimmons in lime water a while to neutralize the tannins. Some clever person in Spain figured out pouring cognac into a container, also placing persimmons in the container but above the cognac somehow, sealing the container, and then waiting would sweeten the fruit. At some point, open the container and the persimmons might be sweet but at least you get the cognac.
Makes sense to simply freeze persimmons to bring out the sweetness since that happens in nature. That will be my next experiment.
If you put them on a tray to ripen, place them calyx-side down, and don’t worry about tigers.