Persimmon

Diospyros virginiana

Native persimmon is the fruit tree that belongs in every wildlife-oriented landscape in the East. Orange-yellow fruits ripen after the first hard frost, hanging on bare branches into December. Deer, foxes, opossums, raccoons, and every fruit-eating bird on the continent finds this tree in fall. Pluck a ripe persimmon and taste it. sweet, custardy, with hints of honey and brown sugar. Nothing bitter about a fully ripened fruit. The bark develops a distinctive blocky, alligator-hide texture with age, beautiful in winter. Tiny white flowers are visited by native bees in spring. Plant male and female trees for reliable fruit production. Persimmon is a slow-growing, long-lived tree that rewards the patience it asks for with decades of fall abundance.