North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Elizabeth Hilborn <ehilborn@mebtel.net>]

William,

I can't fully test your' heat and brown coloration' hypothesis, but I 
can offer my experience.

I planted a Yates that I ordered from Stark Bros. about 4 years ago. It 
bore fruit for the first time this year. I concur on their excellent 
falvor, size and early ripening. I expected (based on Jerry's previous 
comments) but did not see significant brown discoloration in my fruit.  
I may have missed insignificant specs of color. They looked pretty 
uniformly orange to me. It has been an unusually hot summer here in 
central NC, within the top 5 hottest years on record I believe.

Betsy Hilborn
7a Central NC

  I have often heard that the Yates fruit has dark specs (precipitated 
tannin?) embedded in the flesh. For example ,here is a comment from 
Jerry Lehman: "Juhl (Yates) is among the earliest. It is large & sweet. 
I highly recommend it. Only problem is the flesh is loaded with 
precipitated tannins (black material) and isn't pleasant to look at. 
Looks dirty!!! Otherwise a great early persimmon. It is the seed parent 
of H-118 which has much less black material."    I hadn't noticed this 
before. Upon closer observation one very hot year, I did notice some 
insignificant brown specs in the flesh. But they were not conspicuous 
,and did not affect the taste. These close-ups of cut fruit from the 
2011 season show no dark "inclusions" (brown specs) in the flesh of 
Yates fruit This has been a cooler-than-usual summer ,with heat unit 
accumulations below normal.  This year  is the latest this fruit has 
ever ripened for me. I have formulated a hypothesis: the brown specs 
occur more in years of  "high heat unit accumulations" and in regions 
with hotter summers than mine. Perhaps the grape growers on list can 
confirm a similar phenomenon with wine grapes: Is there a correlation 
between hot summers and high tannin concentrations in grapes? Of course 
there could be other cultural explanations.  P.S.I got my graftwood of 
Yates directly from Ed Yates.
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