If you plant persimmon for the fruit, I know that we have at least two varieties in Japan. One, the fruit is quite bitter off the tree, but if you harvest and peel them, then hang them up to dry in the cold outside and out of the rain, after two months or so they are very sweet and make great snacks. Cut the twigs that hold the fruit to the tree and leave a small T to tie around, string them up that way in a line. Rodents will go after them if they can reach, but the birds don't seem to be interested. The other variety sweetens and gets soft on the tree, eating them is like eating jelly. The branch unions on Persimmon can be rather weak, climbers need to be wary. I've seen a number of those trees blow over as well, there is a fair amount of the wood in my wood pile. The Persimmon when the wood is black is quite pretty and has a special name. I'm not sure what causes that, it might be soil conditions, and much rarer to find it. Rather landscape like in appearance, the Koreans were big on it for furniture drawer faces and for other relatively small woodwork parts, and they made some fine pieces with the wood. When drying, it can warp like crazy and almost immediately, probably another reason it's use for woodwork was limited to smaller items, even with the larger trees. Some areas, like on Sado island, the fruit gets particularly large, if huge isn't a better word. Grown for commerce, no doubt the farmers arrange that with how they maintain the trees and fruit production, plus the species does well in the close to the sea and cold weather winter environment.
mine are loaded this year I had to prop some branches so they wouldn't split out. They are almost ready for picking. This year they will become wine.
