Persimmons
The Major Mitchell cockatoos arrived and started eating all our persimmons. The tree is too big to net, so we picked about eighty of the best. The tree looks like a large orange tree covered in oranges, but they are persimmons. They will go through their final ripening inside without trouble.
When ripe the calyx often remains attached to the fruit after harvesting, but becomes easier to remove as it ripens. They are high in glucose, with a balanced protein profile. I love them on breakfast cereal. Just grasp the calyx and cut a slot in the bottom of the fruit and squeeze it onto your breakfast cereal as if it was a passion fruit.
I wrote last year on our delight at seeing some of our fruit trees ripen. “Fresh fruit is one of the delights of the garden. The citrus garden has a good supply of large orange, mandarin, lemon and lime trees. But in the fruit garden are nashi pears, apples, apricots, figs, mulberry, peaches, mangos, nectarines, persimmons, plums, pecans, lychees, guavas, loquat, macadamias, and bananas. The vines give us grapes and passion fruit, and in four or five terracotta pots are the strawberries.” “http://www.gordonmoyes.com/2007/11/16/springs-the-crown-of-all-the-year/”
My wife Beverley makes jam and preserves from this fruit and already this year she has jam of apricots, peaches, plums, guavas and so on. There are also bottles of fruit chutney, which goes with most meats. Have you tried guava jam? Delicious! Normally she has also made berry jam by this time of the year but the season has been a bit odd this year. But now, the persimmons will soon be weighed for the making of the persimmon jam. She has already used a number to make a fruit and nut cake with persimmons, which keep the log cake moist and delicious. There are good recipes around for using persimmons, but in the local fruiterers recently the fruit were selling at $1.50 each, so it is better to grow your own.
Persimmons are eaten fresh or dried, raw or cooked. When eaten fresh, the peel is usually peeled off and the fruit is often cut into quarters or eaten whole like an apple. The flesh ranges from firm to mushy and the texture is unique. The ripe flesh is very sweet but when firm possesses an apple-like crunch. The persimmon also can be used in cookies, cakes, puddings, salads and as a topping for breakfast cereal. Persimmon pudding is a dessert using fresh persimmons. Persimmons and ice-cream I can only imagine!
The fruit of the persimmon is an absolute joy to look at or to paint, with a rough, leathery calyx at the stem end. It grows to about the size of an apple, starting out yellow, then turning a wonderful orange, even tangerine-red, as it starts to ripen from April to May or June, depending on the locality. When it’s time to harvest, make sure you remove fruit with the secateurs – if you just pull them off, you can easily damage the fruit. To ripen hard fruit put in a bowl with a ripe apple or banana, and the ethylene from those fruit will help ripen the persimmon quickly.
Originally persimmons all came from China. The persimmon, or Diospyros kaki, is part of the Ebony family, known for its exceptionally hard black wood that was once used in making piano keys. It’s a highly decorative tree, with a semi-weeping habit, and the foliage is often used by florists in flower arrangements. Even where we live on the Central Coast, N.S.W., the leaves turn golden, red and brown in autumn. The original trees travelled to Japan (they were pictured there in the 8th Century!) and the Middle East centuries before Europe and America.
The persimmon grew in Ein Gedi in thick groves in Old Testament times. King Josiah of Judah installed the practice of anointing new kings with persimmon oil. Called the afarsimon in Hebrew, the persimmon is mentioned in the ancient Jewish Talmud. Ein Gedi is an oasis on the Dead Sea. I have visited and studied the archaeological remains there. It is interesting for the study of the history of Judaism, as its rock caves gave refuge to heroes and ascetics.
The history of Ein Gedi starts in the Bible, when it is mentioned several times. The Song of Songs extols its vineyards (1:14). King David hid in the “strongholds of Ein Gedi” after he fled from King Saul (Samuel I, 24:1). The first inhabitants lived there in the Stone Age (approximately 5000 years ago), near the Ein Gedi spring. It is mentioned in Bible texts in reference to the Jewish kings. The first Israelite settlement dates from the 7th century BC, during the time of the kings of Judah, to whose constituency Ein Gedi belonged.
According to the second book of Chronicles, King Uzziah built towers and hewed water cisterns there. The Israelites used the spring water for irrigation and channeled it to the village. A time of agricultural prosperity began. Ein Gedi became famous for its dates (Chronicles II, 20:2) and the persimmon in thick groves. The resin flowing from the plant was collected and produced a most famous perfume. The Israelite kings also extracted perfume for anointing oil from persimmons.
The Israelite settlement was destroyed by the Babylonians. Afterwards the settlement was inhabited by Jews returned from Babylon. The settlement of Ein Gedi itself was fortified during the Hasmonean kings, and crowned with a royal estate. It was a large settlement in the time of Jesus.
Before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the Dead Sea area buzzed with religious activity. The sect of Essenes, whose main centre was in Qumran, also settled in Ein Gedi in the first century, according to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. They lived higher up in the mountains, near to the Ein Gedi spring, where archaeologists have found remains of 30 living quarters and a water pool for baptisms. (for a full discussion see http://www.gordonmoyes.com/2005/03/22/introduction-to-baptism/).
Meanwhile the Romans had heard about the lucrative perfume business in Ein Gedi. Marc Antony, the lover of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, confiscated the persimmon groves for her, but after her death King Herod leased them back. During the First Jewish War, the Jewish inhabitants of Ein Gedi tried to uproot the groves so they would not fall into Roman hands; the Romans fought to prevent it.
A few years before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, according to the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, fanatic Zealots from Masada invaded the agricultural settlement of Ein Gedi. They stole all of the crops after killing 700 women and children, and returned with the spoils to their stronghold on Masada (War 4:401-4). After it was conquered by the Romans, Ein Gedi became quiet again, due to a Roman unit which enforced peace in the region. The soldiers also built a bathhouse where they relaxed. The remains of it can be seen today.
During the Second Jewish War (130-135 AD), the famed leader of the Jewish rebels, Bar Kokhba, used Ein Gedi as his main administrative centre. At the approach of the Romans he retreated to caves in the area. Some letters and other artifacts from Bar Kokhba and his fighters, even leather sandals and reed items, are remarkably well preserved because of the dry desert climate. They can be seen in the lower room of the Shrine of the Book. When the Romans took over in Ein Gedi and the rest of Israel, Ein Gedi was destroyed once more, and with it the famous persimmon groves. However, today a variety of persimmon called ‘Sharon fruit’ is widely grown in Israel.
According to Jane Edmonston on the ABC, persimmon trees can reach a height of 7 metres. There are two types of persimmon – the non-astringent type that can be eaten as soon as it colours up – and the astringent one. In Australia, the Mary Valley Orchards is a family owned & operated fruit plantation, producing sweet, seedless, non-astringent persimmons which are easy to eat.
The Sweet Persimmon is not to be confused with the astringent variety that most people associate with when they first hear the word persimmon. That variety needs to be soft before any attempt can be made to eat it. Look out for one called ‘Nightingale’ but wait until it goes absolutely soft and squishy in the flesh. The tannins in the astringent persimmons make them virtually inedible until they become really soft and juicy, just like an apricot jam texture. It’s a delicious flavour.
For those setting up a new home or those who still have room in the backyard, I would recommend a persimmon tree. They look good, are deciduous with gorgeous autumn colours, and their fruit is most enjoyable.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.