North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Jwlehman@aol.com]

In a message dated 11/21/2005 12:29:20 PM US Eastern Standard Time, lostman_amiga@yahoo.com writes:
> I have to ask are persimmons just geniticly unstable or do their genes just mutate readily??
>
> Or (more likely) do I just not understand these fruits at all!?!

?

Hi Robert,

You aren't alone, I don't understand it either. 

The 90 chromosome persimmon has 3 pairs of each chromosome or six each making it a hexaploid. What causes a few to switch sexual _expression_ to the best of my knowledge is unknown. 

Some males will put on perfect flowers, but haven't seen pure pistillate flowers on a male. Some females will bear male flowers, but no perfect flowers. Confused?  I've read there are some other tree species will also do this, but don't know which. The cultivar Szukis will switch when grafted between pure pistillate, pure staminate and bisexual. So to test if the understock has an influence I grafted Szukis onto known pistillate and staminate understocks. Some switched to female on male understock and visa versa. The rootstock doesn't seem to influence the sexual _expression_. It may be fairly safe then to assume micro-nutrients aren't involved. 

Another interesting observation. On some male trees the flowers are in various stages between pure male to perfect. That is, the ovaries in some are totally undeveloped, while others maybe 20% developed, some 30%, 35%, 40% developed and some 50% developed, and functional to the point of having the capability of being fertilized and maturing fertile seed in small fruits. Claypool's F-100 is one such as well as another I discovered on a tree on my neighbors property. On the F-100 almost every king flower (that is the first one to bloom in each set of three) is perfect and receptive and will bear small fruit. 

If anyone reading knows of other males bearing fruit I'd like scion wood. I have a few seedlings from staminate trees that haven't flowered yet.  

Jerry