This weekend when I walked out into the fields, I found that the persimmon tree was almost bare of leaves. The fall rains and winds of the last week had carried them away.
However, the hardiest of the fruits still hang onto the branches. The others, already fallen, lie tempting but inedible, in the meadow grass around the base of the tree.
I often wonder if the ‘possums and raccoons – or maybe even the deer – can eat them in this state?
I am sure they don’t mind that they have been lying on the ground, but for my palette the fruits are unripe – and will turn my mouth inside out. I think “astringent” is the term.
The tannins in the unripe fruit cause the skin cells in your mouth to contract – and your entire mouth starts to “pucker.” This is not as in pucker your lips to kiss someone, but an uncomfortable drying sensation in your mouth. You know right away that this is something you do not want to eat again.
But after the first hard frost the fruit is able to ripen. My Father told me so – after I had tasted my first one from the ground. On that cold morning, I will hurry out to the ridge and stand under this tree – or another I know of – and try to reach the fruit – ripened by the frost – and savor its sweet fall nectar.
It tastes like pumpkin but lighter – and more (as Euell Gibbons might have said) ‘woodsy’.
I always make my first bite just a bit of a nibble – in case it is still un-ripe.
CAUTIONS
1.There are four large and bitter seeds in the fruit.. I usually eat the fruit by gently drawing the flesh out of the fruit and spitting out the seeds. I would not advise just popping them in your mouth.
2.Another ‘Caution’ is that if you somehow force yourself to eat a large amount of unripe persimmons, it can form a hard vegetable mass (a Bezoar ‘stone’) in your stomach that will be difficult, if not impossible, to pass through the rest of your digestive system.
The persimmons certainly have a true fall taste to them. I believe they have all the flavors of the rest of the harvest captured in each of the small fruits.
My wife and I have gathered persimmons before, and once we had enough to make some cookies from them. However, the seeds and the skins do make it somewhat difficult to get the flesh out of the fruit and into the mix. But it was worth it, as they were delicious.
One of these days when I am sitting in a brewery (I have picked out the one I will tell) I will recommend they make a seasonal fall beer out of the Virginia Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) – not the foreign ones that can be bought in the supermarket. (Actually, I have never tried those.)
I think a beverage made from hand-gathered fruits, after the first hard frost, from the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, would make an excellent and refreshing drink. And it could have a label calling out its heritage – a ‘possumwood beer. Perhaps that name for the tree in North Carolina tells me what animal enjoys the fruit.
Back to my walk across the fields in the fall.
The afternoon was getting on, and I turned towards home. I would come back and look up into these branches again. I also know that further along there are smaller trees with a history of ‘fruiting.’ After the hard frost comes it will be easy to pick a smooth, round, orange reward from the lower branches. The skin will be wrinkled and dusty after the hard frost. I will turn it over in my hand several times to enjoy the feel and the texture. Then I will pull it open and enjoy not just its flavor, but also the visual as I stand on the edge of a field, on the side of a hill, with the fall colors of the Blue Ridge beyond me.
The cool night air of fall wraps itself around me as I walk home under the clear twilight sky of Virginia. The early moon hangs under the branches of the Persimmon tree. The moon light is washed out by the last of the setting sun. The persimmons, in this celestial light, glow with a promise. Now I only have to wait – and then return.