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[Lon Rombough <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

First, minor correction.  Persimmons produce root suckers.  A rhizome is an underground stem, usually thickened and serving as a food storage organ.  

Root suckers usually don't have enough fibrous roots with them to transplant well.  The best way to get some success is to cut the root with a straight edge shovel, then leave the sucker for a season to grow some fibrous roots.  The next season, you should be able to dig them, WITH soil, and get some to transplant successfully.  

It now appears that persimmon trees can, under some conditions, produce opposite sex flowers for a time as a survival mechanism  That way, an isolated tree can still set seed and have a chance to produce offspring.

The late Dr. McDaniel at the U. of Ill did some of the only breeding of American persimmons at a university.  You must have found some of the material from his work.  Named?  You'd have to get into the university records and see if there are still any maps of them there.  Jim Claypool got his start from McDaniel.
-Lon Rombough


Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.
On Nov 14, 2004, at 3:37 PM, robscott@freeshell.org wrote:


Regarding the persimmons -- don't they also produce rhizomes?

There is a grove of Persimmon trees here, reportedly all the trees are clones (attached by rhizomes underneath) from an original parent tree 25 years old. Attempts to transplant "seedlings" revealed that they were suckers and 0% of transplant attempts were successful. They even tried presevering rhizome connections, then returning with a mechanical tree digger.

Here's my puzzle: If this single parent generated this whole grove of root sprouts, it must've produced both types of flower at some point, for there are now Persimmon trees all over the nearby viscinity. The original trees were volunteers, and I've identified them as wild (unselected) D. virginiana . I'm in Zone 5b, Illinois.

Second puzzle: I discovered a University of Illinois Persimmon patch from the 1960s or 70s that is loaded with seedless virginiana Persimmons which are likely a named cultivar -- any ideas? Golf ball sized & even ripening.

Rob Scott
Urbana, IL
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