Meader
Diospyros virginiana
The record
- Parentage
- Diospyros virginiana
- Origin
- Elwyn Meader · New Hampshire · distributed to nurseries from 1974
- Rights
- rights unknown — No patent, certificate, or trademark found in the sources consulted.
- Pollination
- Parthenocarpic — sets seedless fruit without a male; with a male nearby it sets seeded fruit instead
- Species
- Diospyros virginiana
Description
The one-tree American persimmon, and the reason it is on every beginner’s list.
American persimmon is functionally dioecious: a named cultivar is a female clone and normally needs a male somewhere in range. ‘Meader’ is parthenocarpic and will set seedless fruit on its own. Put a male nearby and it sets seeds instead — the same tree, a different fruit, decided by what is growing next to it.
Read the self-fertility claim precisely. It is well attested for this cultivar and it is not a general property of the species; a nursery applying the same phrase to other American persimmons is making a claim the sources do not support. And note that seedless is a feature here rather than a compromise: the seeds in an American persimmon are large and numerous enough to be the main obstacle to eating it.
Elwyn Meader bred it in New Hampshire and it went out to nurseries from 1974. He is the same breeder behind a long list of cold-climate fruit selections, and he made a practice of releasing his work freely rather than protecting it.