09/26/2026
Welcome back Flora-Fauna Fridays! We’re glad to see that you haven’t soured on us after 37 weeks and talking about the Sourwood last week. This week, we’re back into the forest for another incredibly popular tree that provides a tasty treat when ripe: the American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)!
- The American Persimmon is a deciduous tree that can vary rather drastically in height, from a low shrubby 15 feet up to 100 feet tall depending on soil quality. It can also range in width from about 20 to 35 ft. The bark is usually a dark brown or dark gray, divided into plates that some say resemble reptile scales.
- The Persimmon’s leaves are alternate and simple, measuring in at 4 to 6 inches in length and oval in shape. During the summer months, they are a dark green and somewhat shiny color. Once autumn rolls around, the leaves are known to change to your standard fall colors of yellow to orange to red.
- The fruits of the Persimmon are the real star of the show with this flora. These trees are dioecious (meaning that there are separate male and female trees) and will require one male and one female to produce the fruit. While it may take 4 to 9 years to produce fruit, it is worth the wait. They are often about 1 to 2 inches in size, 2 to 8 seeds per fruit, orange in color, and have been compared in flavor to dates when ripe. However, if you want to prank someone you know, you could give them an unripe persimmon. Unripe persimmons are incredibly astringent, due to being high in tannins. This will cause the mouth to feel dry, numb, or “sandpapery”.
- D. virginiana has been found to grow best in moist, well-drained soils in full sun to partial shade. They can tolerate a variety of other environments, but will likely stay somewhat diminutive in size and closer to shrub-like in appearance. They are native to the eastern United States, ranging from southern Connecticut in the north to Florida in the south, and stretching west to Iowa.
- While you can eat a raw Persimmon straight from the ground or tree (please wash it for your safety first), there are plenty of uses for it. The pulp of the fruit can be made into jams, pie, pudding, or bread. Some have taken the fruit and fermented it to create b**r or brandy. The wood has been known to be heavy, strong, and very close-grained. This makes it preferred for golf-club heads and furniture veneers.
- While this fruit has come to be known by many names, there are two particularly interesting things we think should be known in regards to the Persimmon seeds. One is that, during the American Civil War, soldiers were known to wash, boil, and roast persimmon seeds to create a coffee substitute whenever trade routes were unavailable (while we cannot confirm caffeine content, it did taste fairly coffee-like). The second is one that many have likely heard: if you open the seed of a Persimmon, you are able to tell what type of winter you are likely to have. If the inside of the seed resembles a Fork, you can expect to have a mild winter. If the inside resembles that of a Knife, it will be a cold or “cutting” winter with ice. If the inside resembles a Spoon, it predicts a heavy snow winter as you could interpret the spoon to relate to shoveling.
- If you’re looking to try our Persimmons, there are some that can be found around the Museum/main parking lot. There are also some found along the back of the Enclosure Field and along the Nature Trail.
