What I am about to cover is a short course on persimmons. We will begin with persimmon sexes.
There are five known persimmon race sexes, plus most persimmons are parthenocarpic, meaning that persimmons will set fruit without a male and the fruit will be seedless.
Persimmons Sexes:
M/F= Male that produces female flowers
F/M= Female that produces male flowers
F= Female flower
M= Male flowers
Then there are trees that make perfect flowers (Have both male and female parts) that are self-fertile but there are very few of these.
In the United States we have three persimmon species and three races that are being used by the industry:
90 Chromosome Kaki Asian Persimmons Diospyros kaki 90 Chromosome northern North American persimmons Diospyros virginiana 60 Chromosome southern North American Persimmons Diospyros virginiana 30 Chromosome southern Texas American Persimmons Diospyros virginiana 30 Chromosome Lotus Caucasus Mountains of Turkey and Ukraine Diospyros lotus used to stimulate pollination of persimmons to be seedless and is often used as a rootstock.
Yes, I know it makes it even more confusing than it must be, but most people think that all persimmons are the same, when this is far from the truth.
Only the like type 90 chromosome persimmons have the same number of chromosomes. Persimmon breeders have been able to cross these using pollen manipulation and embryo rescue techniques to produce hybrids.
Russian plant breeders in the early 80s laboriously made the first cross using the before mentioned techniques to produce Rosseyanka, a 50/50 hybrid of American and Asian persimmons. This hybrid will readily cross with Asian (Kaki) X American (Virginiana) hybrid persimmons.
Using Rosseyanka a friend of ours, David J. Lavergne from the University of Louisiana worked tirelessly and was able to develop many of the well-known hybrids in existence today. David passed away in January 2016 I believe.
There are a number of other persimmon breeders from our area of the country. Jerry Lehman of Terre Haute Indiana made many crosses/ hybrids that will be propagated by nurseries for many