I’m in north Texas and have been on a persimmon kick this spring. I planted 25-50 persimmon in the last several years but this year purchased 2 Moris Burton, a Yates, 2 prok and 3 deer magnets. These trees were purchased from three different companies and were planted in the following order, the deer magnets were planted on March 6, the Yates and Moris Burton were planted on March 15 and the prok were planted on March 25. All of the persimmon that I planted have “woken up “ and have started to leaf out except for the deer magnets. I realize that the deer magnets are supposed to hang on and drop late in the season but does that also mean they will leaf out much later than the other persimmon? To be fair, many of my native persimmon have yet to leaf out but I am a little concerned that all of the other high dollar persimmon have leafed out except for the deer magnets, anybody else have the same experience with this variety, thanks in advance.
Should it take this long?
- Thread starter R C
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Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
Scratch a limb with your thumbnail, and if you see green they are alive. None of my persimmons here have leaved out yet, but I have pears the size of a dime.
I do have Deer Magnet but haven't paid that much attention to when the leaves come out.
I do have Deer Magnet but haven't paid that much attention to when the leaves come out.
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g squared 23
5 year old buck +
I noticed that my crabapples all were leafing out before my apples, and my pears were further along. Some species just leaf out earlier than others.
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Catscratch
5 year old buck +
Are you going to have to sweat them?
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
First, keep in mind that there is no authority for naming persimmon varieties. While some of the earlier developed varieties like Moris Burton, Yates, and Prok are pretty consistent, many of the recent "wildlife" "varieties" can have duplicate names. Most of them are actually varieties from the old Claycomb crossing efforts. The idea was to develop persimmons as a commercial product. Varieties that were prolific but had characteristics that made them less valuable commercially, are being marketed with "Deer" in the name as a wildlife tree. Others are just wild persimmon trees that are being marketed with "Deer" in the name.
Having said that, persimmons don't transplant well as bare root trees. They have a large tap root that gets cut when they are harvested. The shock of transplant seems to affect persimmons more than other trees I've worked with. The old saying with bare root trees is that they sleep the first year, creep the second year and finally leap the third year. This is just their adjustment to the shock of transplant.
With persimmons, it is not uncommon to have some trees stay dormant for a full growing season as they recover. This is not the rule, but it happens more frequently than with other trees. As others suggest, a scratch test will give you information, but I would not be concerned yet. It is not so much related to their drop time as to how they react to transplant.
I have many different varieties of persimmons on my place. They grow native on my place. I like to graft male trees over to varieties with known drop times so that I have persimmons dropping across a very long time frame. I notice that different varieties seem to leaf out at different times as well.
I'm in zone 7a. Bark grafting requires the sap to be flowing well. Here that occurs in early to mid-May. I would begin to worry about a tree that did not leaf-out by June, but I would not give up on it for a year unless the scratch test shows it is clearly dead.
Thanks,
Jack
