I like to challenge the limited beliefs of my memory, and where persimmon is concerned, I think of the ripe fruits as one of our best (or at least most abundant) wild foods. I recall the tannin-rich inner bark, like the fruits, as being highly astringent (puckery). As I ponder information I’ve collected on persimmons, all roads lead back to the time of George Washington’s presidency. In 1792, a physician and chemist, James Woodhouse (1770-1809) completed his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania with publication of An Inaugural Dissertation, on the Chemical and Medical Properties of the Persimmon Tree, and the Analysis of Astringent Vegetables.
The persimmon tree, called piakimine, we learn from early explorers, was widely used as food and medicine by native groups who made a paste of the ripe fruits and baked it into flat cakes about the thickness of the finger. Mixed with flour from other food sources, it made an excellent bread. Colonial physicians used the dried ripe fruit, the powder of the unripe fruit, the powdered inner bark, or bark of the root taken in wine for treatment of dysentery. Woodhouse records a treatment for hemorrhoids “as useful as any, in the cure of the disease,” a mixture of the juice of unripe persimmons with hogs lard, “sugar of lead” (lead acetate which actually has a sweet taste), and opium.
Potential of the unripe juice of persimmons in tanning leathers excited Thomas Jefferson. Woodhouse suggested that 300 persimmon trees, producing an average of four bushels of fruits, could produce six pounds of gum resin per tree which would be far superior to oak bark for tanning. It would require less labor, less capital and be far cleaner for the environment than the standard tannery of the day, which relied on oak bark.
For a time, North Carolina cultivated persimmons commercially. In the South, when forests were cleared persimmon trees were preserved, which is perhaps why we have an abundance of persimmon trees around old Ozark farmsteads.
Woodhouse also advocated unripe persimmon fruit juice as a superior black dye and ink compared with anything else traded in late 18th-century America, at a time when America’s leaders were trying to wean consumption away from foreign imports while advocating for the use of native plant products.
Just Google the title of Woodhouse’s dissertation and download a copy for yourself to discover his advice for making distilled persimmon spirits and beer. Imagine the possibilities if we followed the lead of the founding fathers and called the fruits “Virginia date plums.