Paleo Foraging

Diospyros texana Scheele

= D. cuneifolia, D. mexicana, Brayodendron texanum

Texas persimmon, Mexican persimmon, black persimmon, chapote, sapote, chapote prieto, sapote prieto, sapote negro

Comanche: dunaseika (Carlson and Jones 1939:520,526) / tuhnaséka (Kavanagh 2008:140)

Location in Texas: C, SW, S, and sparse SE TX; common in Travis Co.

Form: smaller tree, up to 45 ft. tall.

Flowers: Feb-Apr (white, green).

Food

Fruit – eaten by the Apache (Bourke 1895) and Comanche (Carlson and Jones 1939:520,526, Kavanagh 2008:140). Greatly esteemed by central Texas Indians (Ohlendorf et al. 1980:564). The seeds were found to be common in coprolites of archeological Indians of southwest Texas (Williams-Dean 1978:163,178). Eaten by the Mexican Kickapoo (Latorre and Latorre 1977:345).

Gathering Season – fruit: late summer to early fall (Tull 1987).

Notes – a heavily skewed male:female ratio makes fruiting trees about 9 times less abundant than males.

Material

Wood – Used to make end goals for ball games by the Mexican Kickapoo (Latorre and Latorre 1977:344).

ID

For me, the easiest way to identify a Texas persimmon tree is looking for its smooth, light-gray trunks and larger branches. It has peeling bark, much like its (also delicious) relative, madrone.

Experimentation

This is my favorite fruit of all, both wild and domesticated. It is incredibly delicious. Its close relative, Mexican persimmon (Diospyros nigra), is sometimes called “chocolate pudding fruit,” so while I’ve never tried that one, it sounds like it has a similar taste.

Texas persimmon fruits taste like molasses, chocolate, cherries, and prunes all at once. They have a soft, juicy texture. The have a few large seeds one can easily spit out or be separated.

The fruits are extremely astringent and distasteful when unripe. Even partially-ripe fruits are far inferior to fully-ripe fruits. You can pick them before they are fully ripe and allow them to ripen at home, as long as the ripening process has begun, i.e. there are at least some areas of coloration to purple from green. You can speed along the process by putting them in a paper bag with a ripe banana or another ripe fruit (the ethylene gas emitted signals nearby fruits to ripen).

The juices will stain one’s fingers and mouth and can be used to dye fabric. No mordant is needed, simply simmer with the fruits to dye fibers brown to purple-black (Tull 1987).

The heartwood on big old Texas persimmon trees is black as ebony and extremely dense. The wood of its relative, common persimmon (D. virginiana) is prized for traditional golf club driver heads because it will not crack under sudden or impact loads (Peattie 1991). The hard, smooth, non-warping wood of D. virginiana was also valued as the material to make shuttles in textile looms (Peattie 1991).

So, the wood of Texas persimmon could be valued for various purposes.

My personal speculation for the evolution in such strong wood in this genus with so many delicious fruits is that the megafauna ubiquitous in North America until the last ice age such as the short-faced bear or the giant ground sloth prized these fruits just as large mammals still do and their clambering about branches drove the adaptation for wood that can resist breakage under the weight of such megafauna.