American Persimmons. Meader, Early Jewel, and Lehman's Delight

I have a 5 years old tree of American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) selection H-63A. The original tree hardly makes any fruits.  I grow it in Vacaville, California Central Valley. The tree makes a lot of young fruits that all dropped with the first heat waves.  However, a number of recent grafts of other cultivars on it started fruiting.  Dressing the fruits into bags allowed me to get the fruits to taste this year. Last year, the birds took them all. Now the fruits are dropping into the bags when perfectly ripe.  They were collected and tasted on October 31, 2020.

Meader is a well known cultivar. Makes small fruits with dense texture, very sweet, has the expected strong butterscotch/rum flavor.  Excellent fruit. 

Early Jewel  is also known as H-118, and Prairie Star (R) at One Green World nursery . It is one of the selections that came from the late James Claypool breeding program. The fruits are significantly larger than Meader, but less dense in texture. It is also less sweet than Meader, and has a well pronounced butterscotch/rum flavor. Overall it is a very good fruit, but less intense in sugar and flavor than Meader.

The trees of both cultivars are available from England's nursery and One Green World nursery

Update from a follow up tasting on November 8, 2020

Last Sunday I collected four more fruits from my combination tree, a 100-46 fruit, two fruits of Early Jewel, and a fruit of Meader. They are in this order from left to right in the picture below.

100-46 is the largest fruit and it is excellent in the flavor and texture. It has everything you expect from American persimmon on top of it's large size. This cultivar is also known as Lehman's Delight. and available from England's nursery.

I found the fruit of Early Jewel to be much better flavored this time than the one in my previous tasting a week ago. The Meader fruit I got this time was past it's prime stage. I should have more of these later.

Update from a follow up tasting on Saturday November 14, 2020

I collected three more fruits, one from each cultivar, 100-46 (Lehman's Delight), Early Jewel (H-118), and Meader. They are in this order from left to right. 

Lehman's Delight and Early Jewel were excellent fruits here. This Meader fruit was under ripe.

Update on September 26, 2021

I found a few ripe fruits of H-63A, this is the original tree that I used to graft on additional cultivars. The tree is pretty large but the production is low as the tree drops most of the fruit in the fist heat waves usually in May-June. The fruits I got to taste are excellent with no astringency but very strong sweet butterscotch flavor.

D-128 graft (Dollywood) also produced one very sweet large fruit with the strong flavor.

Unfortunately, the branch of 100-46 broke off this summer.  It was overloaded with fruits and I should have thinned them. I will need to graft it again.  

Check our sales site if we have the cuttings available reallygoodplants.com