Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol04B.djvu/426
DIOSPYROS VIRGINIANA, American Persimmon
- Diospyros virginiana, Linnæus, Sp. Pl. 1057 (1753); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. ii, 1195 (1838). Sargent, Silva N. Amer. vi. 7, tt. 252, 253 (1894), and Trees N. Amer. 749 (1905).
- Diospyros guajacana, Romans, Nat. Hist. Florida, 20 (1775).
- Diospyros concolor, Moench, Meth. 471 (1794).
- Diospyros pubescens, Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 265 (1814); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. i. 1 196 (1838).
- Diospyros caroliniana, Rafinesque, Fl. Ludovic. 139 (1817).
- Diospyros Persimmon, Wikstrom, Jahr. Schwed, 1830, p. 92 (1834).
A deciduous tree, attaining occasionally in America 115 feet in height and 6 feet in girth, but usually smaller. Bark’ deeply divided into square corky plates. Young shoots with a minute dense erect pubescence, persistent usually in the second year. Leaves (Plate 199, Fig. 3) oblong or elliptical ; rounded and unequal or broadly cuneate at the base; shortly acuminate at the apex; margin entire and ciliate ; upper surface dull, light green, and glabrous except for some pubescence on the midrib at the base ; lower surface pale, glabrous; veins pinnate, arcuate, and looping near the margin ; petiole pubescent, ½ to 1 inch long.
Flowers appearing, when the leaves are more than half-grown, on the current year’s shoot, diœcious. Staminate flowers in two- to three-flowered pubescent pedunculate cymes; calyx with four broadly ovate acute ciliate lobes; corolla tubular, slightly contracted below the very short acute reflexed lobes; stamens sixteen, in two series, with pubescent filaments. Pistillate flowers, solitary, on short recurved peduncles; stamens eight, usually with aborted anthers; ovary pilose towards the apex, eight-celled ; styles four, two-lobed at the apex, pubescent at the base.
Fruit solitary, on short woody peduncles, persistent on the branches during winter; depressed, globose; surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx, which has four broadly ovate pointed recurved lobes. The fruit is variable in size, from that of a small cherry to a large plum; and its flavour is very different in different localities and even on trees growing close together—sometimes sweet without the action of frost, or ripening after frost, or at other times acid and never edible. Seeds oblong, flattened, ½ inch long. Seedless forms occur, and experiments are being made in America with these and other good varieties.
The leaves on trees, growing in the Southern States, are strongly pubescent beneath ; and this variety, which we have not seen in cultivation in England, is scarcely to be distinguished by the foliage alone from D. Lotus, which has pubescent leaves, and differs in this respect from the ordinary form of D. virginiana, with
1 The bark is well figured in Gard. Chron. iv. 504, fig. 71 (1888).