North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Jwlehman@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/8/2007 5:07:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, Lucky.PIttman@murraystate.edu writes:

> My Rosseyanka is seedless, so far anyway.
>
> Mine is - mostly; an occasional fruit will have a single seed.
> Seems like I remember Jerry Lehman in his report on it, back in '98 or so, indicating that he got 12 seeds out of 85 fruits.
 

Yes, Rosseyanka (Russian Beauty TM) is mostly seedless and Lucky reported correctly. Of those seeds maybe 50% are viable. I have several seedlings which aren't apomictics, expressing themselves as male and females. Thus far only one has fruited for me and was very disappointing. Inferior to the seed parent and randon 90C named cultivars. Have no idea of the pollen parent. 

Yes, Nikita's Gift  (TM) is a back cross of Rosseyanka to kaki and was bred at Yalta by Dr. Kazas. It is a wonderful persimmon but too temperature sensitive for 5b. I suspect the danger point is zero degrees, but definitely more hardy than any kaki and I've tried many kaki seedlings here as well as grafted several onto 90C virginiana. It ripens late but is very sweet, large and many turn as red as a tomato. It should be a wonderful selection for zone 6 and higher. Mine bore a heavy crop this year and sad to say I wasn't paying close attention, waiting for  Nov to pick them and the birds beat me to them. :-(      

Regarding Keener, the foliage looks like virginiana and I poo pooed the idea it was a hybrid. This year mine fruited and I now believe it could be a hybrid. Very large, mild flavor and the seed is shaped more like kaki then virginiana. I hope to have the DNA run next year.   

Jerry



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