← persimmon
freely propagated
Hachiya
Diospyros kaki
The record
- Parentage
- Diospyros kaki
- Origin
- The town of Hachiya, Minokamo City, Gifu Prefecture, Japan
- Rights
- freely propagated — A long-cultivated Japanese clone. No IP claim found in the sources consulted.
- Astringency
- Astringent — pollination-constant astringent (PCA); edible only when fully soft
- Fruit
- Large and acorn-shaped
- Range
- Grown in Japan, China, Korea and California, in mild winters with warm autumns
Description
The classic astringent kaki, and the cultivar responsible for most of the persimmon’s bad reputation in English-speaking countries.
It is loaded with tannin until it is completely, unpleasantly soft — at which point it is superb. Eaten firm it is genuinely awful, and the memory lasts. If a food forest is meant to feed people who did not plant it, the astringency class of a persimmon is not a horticultural footnote, it is a hospitality decision.
The name is a place. It comes from the town of Hachiya in what is now Minokamo City, Gifu.
Where to find it
No source recorded. That does not mean the cultivar is unavailable, only that this record does not yet name a nursery carrying it. Point us at one and it goes in.