**ARCHIVED POST **
Holding a soft, ripe fruit of Texas Persimmon in one’s mouth for even a moment is an experience so rich as to forever shut off any interest in eating refined sugar cane ever again. The difficulty is to get that lusciously ripe purple-black plum-like fruit before the birds. But with an abundant harvest, enough fruits may ripen together for humans and wildlife to share.
For those not willing to leave such delicacies to chance, stapling a paper bag around the ripening fruit makes harvesting easy. Others cover entire branches with netting after the buds are pollinated to safeguard all the fruits.
Texas Persimmon or Chapote (Diospyros texana), is a species with separate female and male trees. Only the female trees bear fruit. For this reason, people who purchase them from garden centers often buy plants that are mature enough to have been labeled whether it is fruit-bearing or pollen-sharing. The trees begin fruiting after 5-6 years of growth.
When planting from seed, many people will start several trees in hopes of getting at least one female tree that will bear fruit and a male tree to pollinate it. Scientists have found the fruit has a chemical that prevents the seeds from growing when it is still in contact with flesh. Other studies have found that the fruit is a major food source for some mammals in the fall, which is months after it ripens. This would imply that when food gets scarce, mammals forage dried fruit still on the tree; thus the seed is still viable when the fruit is eaten and the mammal deposits it with fertilizer. Another amazing cycle of nature!
Texas native plant author Michael Eason has found the range of Diospyros texana to be Central Texas to Big Bend area, south into northern Mexico (adjacent states in Mexico). The tree grows in canyons in semiarid West Texas, in South Texas woodland thickets, and with Ashe Juniper in the Edwards Plateau. In riparian woodlands, Chapote forms the understory along with other small trees or shrubs such as Granjeno and Huisache, below larger trees such as Pecan, Live Oak, Hackberry, Soapberry and Ash.
Texas Persimmon is evergreen in the southern part of its range and deciduous farther north. It’s height ranges from about the height of Texas Mountain Laurel Sophora secundiflora to twice as tall.
Limited archeological research has revealed Native American uses in addition to eating the fruits. Paul Hamel and Mary Chiltoskey, authors of Cherokee plants and their uses—a 400 year history, found that the Cherokee used the fruit, which is highly astringent before it is fully ripened, to treat mouth sores and hemorrhoids; and chewed the bark to alleviate heartburn. Tools made of the wood have been found in caves of the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers.
Diospyros texana is in the plant family which includes Florida native Diospyros ebenum. When mature trees of these species have deposited enough waste into the hardwood to develop large trunks, the wood is a black color. Many humans are drawn to its smooth gray bark which can be seen well because the branches are not much higher than humans.
Texas Persimmon is an example of a native plant that humans constantly displace with an exotic ornamental plant; specifically Crape Myrtles which have similar-looking bark but have no value to native wildlife. Diospyros texana Is the larval host for two native butterflies: Gray Hairstreak and Henrys Elfin.
**ARCHIVED POST**
**ARCHIVED POST LINKS & PICTURES MAY NOT WORK**
**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: cywinski