The Cherimoya
Anona Cherimolia, Mill.
The cherimoya, native of the highlands of Central America, has long been cultivated, and its fruit has been classed, with the pineapple and the mangosteen, as one of the three finest fruits in the world. Certainly it deserves high rank among the fruits of the tropics. This also has been introduced into cultivation in southern Florida, but its culture has assumed much more importance in California, where it seems to feel quite at home.
The tree is a handsome one, with broad velvety bright green leaves, deciduous during the winter months. It grows wherever the orange is hardy, and its fruit, heart-shaped or oval, green or brown, is about the size of a navel orange. Conical protuberances cover the surface and enclose a mass of white, custard-like pulp, with the flavor of the pineapple, in which are imbedded twenty or thirty brown seeds. A taste for this tropical pond apple is as easily acquired as for the pineapple, which has become universally popular. Every garden in the Orange Belt should have a cherimoya tree for ornament and for its fruit.
THE PERSIMMONS
The persimmon tree of the Southern woods belongs to the ebony family, which contains some important fruit and lumber trees, chiefly confined to the genus diospyros, which has two representatives among the trees of North America. Doubtless a climate of longer summers would enable our persimmon trees to produce wood as hard as the ebony of commerce, whose black heart-wood and thick belt of soft yellow sap-wood are the products of five different tropical species of the genus—two from India, one from Africa, one from Malaysia and one from Mauritius. The beautiful, variegated wood called coromandel is produced by a species of ebony that grows in Ceylon.
Fossil remains of persimmon trees are found in the miocene rocks of Greenland and Alaska, and in the later cretaceous beds uncovered in Nebraska. These prove that diospyros once had a much wider range than now, extending through temperate to arctic regions, whereas now our two persimmons and the Chinese and Japanese species, are the only representatives outside the tropics.
The Persimmon
Diospyros Virginiana, Linn.
The persimmon will never be forgotten by the Northerner who chances to visit his Virginia cousins in the early autumn. Strolling through the woods he notes among other unfamiliar trees a tall shaft covered with black bark, deeply checked into squarish plates. The handsome round head, held well aloft, bears a shock of angular twigs and among the glossy, orange-red leaves hang fruits the size and shape of his Northern crabapples. The rich orange-red makes it extremely attractive, and the enthusiasm with which the entire population regards the approaching persimmon harvest focuses his interest likewise upon this unknown Southern fruit. He is eager to taste it without delay, and usually there is no one to object. Forthwith he climbs the tree, or beats a branch with a long pole until a good specimen is obtained. Its thin skin covers the mellow flesh—but the first bite is not followed by a second. The fruit is so puckery that it almost strangles one.