Scientific Name
Diospyros virginiana
American persimmon is a tree of the southeastern U.S. whose native habitat extends west towards east Texas and into the southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. This is a seemingly reduced distribution considering that the species has demonstrated cold hardiness to −30°F. The Diospyros genus, part of the ebony family of plants, has hundreds of species, most of them native to the tropics such as the ebony tree famed for its dark hard wood.
American persimmon leaves are 4 to 6 inches long, a shiny dark green and slightly fuzzy on the reverse side. They may turn orange to scarlet in the fall but sometimes drop with little color. The flowers on any tree are ordinarily of one sex or the other, but occasionally some flowers of the opposite sex are produced. The fruit is a juicy round or oval berry, usually yellow-orange colored, from 1 to 2 inches in diameter with up to eight seeds. Its shape most closely resembles that of the ‘Fuyu’ cultivars sold in markets in late fall, but they’re very astringent unless they’re very soft and ripe, which may require them first having to go through a frost. Such flavorful fruit is highly attractive to wildlife, including squirrels, opossums, raccoons and skunks. Wildlife consuming the fruit can spread the seeds over a considerable distance, and the tree can colonize open lands, which it can also easily do by growing new trees from root suckers some distance from the parent.
American persimmon typically grows to a height of 20 to 30 feet. It has a very distinctive dark bark when it matures, deeply divided by horizontal and vertical fissures into small blocks. The wood is extremely hard and on very old trees can develop as a nearly black ebony. Several persimmon cultivars have been developed over the years, mainly for fruit quality. However, the sister tree, Japanese persimmon (Diospyros kaki), has far superior fruit, especially from its cultivars. Unfortunately, the Japanese species isn’t hardy in our climate. Plant breeders are in active pursuit of a Japanese cultivar or a hybrid of it with American persimmon that is hardy here and can produce high quality fruit. The two persimmon trees planted on the Regis campus in the spring of 2025 are plain species (i.e., not cultivars). One of them had already produced fruit in the tree nursery before being transplanted. The transplant process was difficult for the specimen at the Field House, as these trees are deeply rooted, but it is expected that a tough tree like this can recover.