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  • From: "Bassem Samaan" <bassem@gardener.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Persistent persimmon keeps trying to regrow
  • Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:39:44 -0500

Here's a great article on the Persimmon, in the pittsburgh tribune.
 
Question: After removal of two mature persimmon trees four years ago, we've been getting dozens of shoots from roots that grew under the grass and into our main yard. They are impossible to kill. We have tried everything, even Roundup, which killed all the grass in the areas sprayed. If we burn out the stump, would that help to kill off all the roots that are trying to sprout new trees? Thanks for your help, this is a really bad problem that seems to have no solution.

Below are two solutions to the problem noted above from two adjunct faculty members of Chatham College's Landscape programs, William C. Paxton II and Robert Palmieri. Paxton also provides some interesting facts about persimmon trees.

Answer: There are a number of trees that have the unique capacity to sprout from leftover roots once the main tree is dug and removed. For instance, it seemed a real boon in the nursery business to dig and sell a sweetgum tree and then wait a year to have as many as six to 10 sprouts to replace it. It also is a common forestry practice to harvest a woodlot and experience a second cutting from stump-sprout regeneration.

Regarding your question of how to get rid of a tree that continues to sprout, I suggest a stump-grinder removal unit that will get all of the main stump and most of the roots, at a cost that varies with the size of the stump.

 
 

However, what I find most interesting is that it is a persimmon that you are trying to deal with. In Western Pennsylvania, there are few to be found natively and even fewer planted in landscapes. I know there is a very nice one on the historical site of Old Compass Inn in Laughlintown, Westmoreland County, and I found one just last year on a logged-over gas well site in Greene County. This marvelous species with its very chunky bark and its delicious game and people food (only after frost) to me would be a treasure to have rather than a pest to get rid of.

The wild species is Diosporus virginiana and the one whose fruit you purchase in the market is Diosporus kaki from Japan. Diosporus, by the way, translates as "fruit of the gods." It seems to have very few pests outside of the persimmon root borer and several other minor insects.

In the woodworkers world, it is very closely related to ebony and is identified in the lumber pile by its black streaks from the heartwood. It is most popularly remembered by older golfers who knew persimmon wood was the head of drivers, as it was so hard and tough.

It is the food host, along with hickory and walnut, to the largest caterpillar in the country, the beautifu,l but dragon-like, hickory horn devil, larvae of the royal walnut moth. It is found in the regular diet of the following birds and mammals: turkey; six song birds, including the yellow-bellied sapsucker; nine large mammals, including the red fox and raccoon; two mice; and white-tailed deer.

I remember vividly learning about the "after frost" admonition. I had eaten and enjoyed the sweet fruit given to me by a friend on a Boy Scout survival jamboree. When I spotted them on several small trees near home the next year, I eagerly picked one and plopped it in my mouth. A spoonful of alum could not have turned my mouth inside out quicker. Then I read that generally after frost the fruit ripened on the tree.

If you would really like to love a persimmon, I recommend the chapter called "The Sugar-Plum Tree" in Euell Gibbons' "Stalking the Wild Asparagus." It is six delicious pages long, but I would like to quote the very last paragraph:

"Finally, I must point out that the persimmon with its shiny green foliage is an exceptionally beautiful small tree and should be planted more often as an ornamental. It belongs to the Ebony Family and the dark wood can be turned on a lathe into beautiful bowls and other ornamental objects. If you are looking for food and drink, beauty, goodness and health, why don't you go 'simmon hunting?"

--William C. Paxton II was one of the first registered landscape architects in Pennsylvania as well as a forester. As part of Chatham College's adjunct faculty, he has taught planting design and ornamental horticulture.

Answer: In coastal Virginia, I had success with eradication of bamboo runners from a 25-foot-high bamboo mass planting by cutting the main stalks to 18 inches and pouring Round Up solution directly into them during the growing season.

Similarly, drilling deep cores about a half-inch in diameter into the persimmon trunk and pouring Roundup into the cores during the growing season is worth consideration. Because the persimmon trunk is not freshly cut, the depth of the core may need to be drilled several inches deep to reach live wood.

--Robert Palmieri, another landscape architect, will be teaching in the Chatham College Landscape Programs this fall.


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  • [NAFEX] Persistent persimmon keeps trying to regrow, Bassem Samaan, 04/17/2007

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