Persimmons are sweet treat unless eaten too early

My wife and I were gallivanting about with a friend on his rural property one recent autumn day when he took us to see one particular tree.

It was loaded with a round, reddish- yellow, beautiful fruit about the size of a quarter. My friend asked me if I knew what the fruit was. I drew a blank, but when he told me I remembered seeing one other such tree years ago while I was deer hunting.

It was a persimmon tree, and some old- timers will recall commonly using persimmon fruit to make breads, muffins, cookies, cakes and puddings.

Persimmon trees are native to Ohio, especially in central Ohio on southward.

According to the World Book Encyclopedia, Native Americans made a kind of bread mixing persimmons with crushed corn.

My friend carefully selected a couple of persimmons from the tree and gave them to my wife and I. They were sweet and tasty, and my wife liked hers so much she quickly snatched another one off the tree and bit into it.

Almost immediately, though, she dropped it and ran to the car as fast as the wind, grabbed a bottle of water and washed her mouth out.

She had committed the cardinal sin of selecting an unripe persimmon, which will make a person’s mouth pucker up a whole lot. I asked my wife what happened and she told me, “It felt like acid in my mouth, and my teeth and tongue got real dry. It was bitter.”

An unripe persimmon is filled with an astringent and will do unpleasant things to your mouth.

I was glad, though, that my wife was with me because she gave me a great first- hand description of what an unripe persimmon tastes like.

Native Americans taught early settlers that persimmons should be left on the tree deep into October, when the fruit becomes ripe enough to eat, according to information from the University of Missouri. The fruit may look better earlier in the fall but it will taste better when the temperatures get colder.

My friend knew what a ripe persimmon should look and feel like when he selected a couple for my wife and I to taste.

Persimmons have seeds in them that you have to spit out.

According to the Ohio Division of Forestry, the fruit provides food for all kinds of wildlife, and the wood from a persimmon tree, which is a member of the ebony family, makes excellent golf club heads and billiard cues.

Ozark folklore says persimmon seeds can be used to predict the winter weather, according to the University of Missouri.

Lore says the shape of the tiny seedlings inside a persimmon seed predicts the weather. A spoon-shaped seedling indicates above average snowfall. A knife- shaped seedling predicts colder than normal temperatures, and a fork-shaped seedling signals warmer than normal temperatures.

Even though my wife had a mouth-puckering experience, we both had a very pleasant time that October day standing under a persimmon tree.