a tale of tails, tenacity, and tedium, as told by me, usually barefoot and bellowing

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Persimmons

Persimmon trees can be small
or very tall.
This time of year they are ripening.  Because of the dry weather the leaves have already fallen.  My horses loved persimmons and learned how to rub against the tree to make them fall.
Looks like a good crop this year.
These are wonderful for farm fights, ripe or green.  I have enjoyed many "fights" with cousins and sisters growing up.  Ripe they are soft and sweet.  When green, they are very hard and bitter.  Pick your ammo.  Each has its pluses and minuses. 
The fruits are small but do vary with the type of tree 
and the weather that year.
You basically eat the fruit and spit out the seeds.  Wild animals love them!  There are many great recipes for breads, cakes, and spirits.  The seeds are the famous winter forecasting seeds.  You cut the seeds and the shape you discover forecasts your winter.  Carolina Nana can show you how.  Her persimmon seeds predict a cold winter.  I'm hoping my forecast is different.

UPDATE:  Our seeds show spoons so lots of precipitation for this winter.

21 comments:

The Cranky said...

Persimmon pudding.......... oh yum. *sigh*

aspiritofsimplicity said...

They don't grow this far north. I have never really tasted them.

Martha said...

I've never eaten this fruit. North where I am, this is probably an exotic type :)

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I don't believe I've ever eaten then either.

MadSnapper said...

we had one persimmon tree, none of us would eat them, ripe or not ripe, they just hung until they dropped and were thrown in the compost pile or burned or dumpted

Sandy Livesay said...

Gail,

I've never grown a tree or tasted it's fruit.
Maybe something worth planting in the future.

T. Powell Coltrin said...

I pass a tree full of them every day to and from work. I can't bring myself to eat one since the last time I did, ummmmm, I was a kid and I ate it before it ripened. A dare.

Anonymous said...

I have not eaten this, but I do know about the fight value!

Debbie said...

Awwwwww serving so many purposes!!

Farm Girl said...

I was going to ask you if you had checked your seeds to see what your winter was going to be. I think that is so cool. I love persimmons. I think persimmon cookies have to be the best in the world.
Check you see, I want to know. :)

LindaG said...

Great information! What did your seeds predict, Gail? If I remember right, the weather channels are disagreeing with the farmer's almanac for next year.
I guess we'll see. :-)

Arkansas Patti said...

Didn't know they grew in Ar. How smart of the horses to shake the tree.

TexWisGirl said...

only tried one once. didn't like the texture - same reason i don't like plums or tomatoes. :)

Maude Lynn said...

I haven't had a persimmon in ages!

Lowcarb team member said...

Well, I had to look this up using Wikipedia ... I just love blogging because you are always learning and reading about different things.

" American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is native to the eastern United States. Its fruit is traditionally eaten in a special steamed pudding in the Midwest and sometimes its timber is used as a substitute for ebony (e.g. in instruments)."

Interesting post Gail, and I liked the photo's too.

All the best Jan

carolina nana said...

Look out for all that snow,if those seeds are right you all might get buried. Those are perfect spoons. To make matters worse here I saw an all black wooly worm today !!! Yikes !!
Blessings
marilyn

1st Man said...

Oh my gosh! Thanks for the post, it reminded me to go check on ours. I think our weather, being warmer, has not ripened our yet. Not sure if you saw my blog post last year about my experience with our persimmons. I thought I was going to die, ha. They were SO bitter. But I think they were either bad, or not ripe yet, They didn't look as plump as yours. Regardless of the taste, I want to check our seeds and see what they show. I love your picture of them, I've always heard of the seed being a predictor but haven't seen it. Thanks!

And love the story about your horse, aren't animals amazing?

jo(e) said...

I never knew that about the seeds! Here, we use the woolly bear caterpillar to predict the weather.

Coloring Outside the Lines said...

Mark and I saw a persimmon tree while camping and we were talking about the spoon- I couldn't remember if it meant snow or cold, but I told him whatever it wasn't a good sign. Last winter hung around for what seemed forever!

Ida said...

I've never heard that you could predict the weather with a Persimmon. Those seeds really do look like they have spoons inside them, that is so cool.

Susan Anderson said...

We have several of them in our neighborhood. Most of them end up with very few leaves and lots of persimmons. My grandmother used to make persimmon cookies.

=)

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