Photo: Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. 3 vols. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Vol. 2: 720. Courtesy of Kentucky Native Plant Society. Scanned by Omnitek Inc. — Public domain · source
Survives zone 4 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Diospyros virginiana ("American persimmon") is the cold-hardiest species in the genus, forming root-suckering colonies in the wild and bearing smaller fruit (2-6 cm) that is intensely harsh and astringent while green but turns rich and honey-sweet once fully soft — typically after autumn frost. Unlike Diospyros kaki, there are no widely grown non-astringent ("Fuyu"-type) American persimmon cultivars, so the astringent-until-soft pattern applies to essentially all of them.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- After first frost (Oct–Nov)
- Mature size
- Tree 10–20 m
- Light
- Full sun — tolerates partial when young
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native to eastern North America, from southern Connecticut/New England south to Florida and west through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa — reaching its largest size in the Mississippi River basin.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 4–6 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium in early growth, but slow to reach full size and timber maturity (heartwood may take up to a century to develop) — trees typically begin fruiting around 6 years of age and can ultimately reach 30-80 ft (exceptionally over 115 ft).
- Spacing
- 1000 cm (394 in) apart — about 100 m² (1076 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Alternate, simple, oval leaves 10-15 cm (4-6 in) long with entire margins, emerging reddish-green and downy, maturing to thick dark green, and turning orange to scarlet in autumn.
- Root system
- A strong, carrot-like taproot combined with thick, fleshy, stoloniferous lateral roots that sucker prolifically — the taproot makes young trees hard to transplant, while the suckering habit lets established trees spread into colonies.
- Fruit description
- Round (subglobose) fruit 2-6 cm across, orange-yellow (sometimes bluish) when ripe, containing 1-8 seeds — pulp is harshly astringent while green but becomes sweet, rich and "luscious" once fully soft, a process often improved or hastened by autumn frost.
- Propagation
- By seed (cold-stratified and sown in a cold frame as soon as ripe, or stratified stored seed sown in early spring, germinating in 1-6 months at 15°C), by removed root suckers, or — for named cultivars such as 'Meader', 'Dooley', and 'Geneva Red' — by grafting. It is also the standard cold-hardy rootstock used for grafting kaki and hybrid persimmons.
- Pollination
- Typically dioecious (separate male and female trees), though most named cultivars are parthenocarpic and set seedless fruit without a pollinator present; where pollination does occur, flowers are pollinated by insects and wind.
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Tolerates a wide range of soils — light, medium and heavy, mildly acid to mildly alkaline — but performs poorly in very acid or waterlogged ground; a good, deep, loamy soil in sun to light shade is preferred, without a heavy documented feeding regime.
How it spreads. Thick, fleshy, stoloniferous roots readily produce root suckers, so the species commonly forms colonies or thickets of genetically identical stems spreading outward from an original tree — a clear contrast to the single-trunked habit of most other Diospyros.
Growing tips. The most cold-hardy species in the genus — dormant mature wood tolerates roughly -35°C (to USDA zone 4) — though spring growth is frost-tender, so a warm, sheltered site helps ripen fruit and wood. Susceptible to persimmon wilt (Cephalosporium diospyri), a lethal vascular fungal disease that enters through bark wounds (often caused by insects such as the hickory twig girdler and powderpost beetle) and has locally eliminated the species from parts of its range — avoid wounding bark and paint over cuts. Fall webworm commonly defoliates young trees but rarely causes lasting harm.
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