I don't believe any American persimmons are truly self-fertile. Originally they thought Meader was but that is no longer believed to be the case. if you search these threads you will find a post someone made that was a very cogent explanation of Jerry Lehman's view on Meader.

Being in Iowa, my guess is your persimmon is American and not Asian.

If you have a new persimmon variety that is seedless, and does not require pollination, that seems to me like quite a find!

I'd work on cultivating it so it doesn't die off. It ought to do well on its own roots. Persimmons propagate on softwood cuttings (green) next season when you do any non-dormant pruning try your hand at potting them.

If you have had success propagating persimmon softwood cuttings, please share your method in detail.

I was referring the Fascist_Nation made about softwood cutting propagation. Not only have I not had any success with that method, I don't know anyone who has. I thought maybe he found a reliable method for softwood cuttings.

I sent you an email about NG.

Tony

I would love to be able to grow American varieties, but I don't think I have the option to grow them due to time it takes to reach bearing size. A multigraft with an American male persimmon would be worth trying, would take less room in the yard compared to adding another tree, and be right in there with the female varieties. Also, if an American male was grafted to Saijo, especially with NG nearby, and seeds formed on either, it would be interesting to see what happened. Saijo / American would be 50% of each. NK/American would be 37.5% Asian and 62.5% American.

Reading through lone ranger's original post again, I am especially interested that your American persimmon is seedless. To me that means they are not pollinated, similar to what many Asian persimmons do. It sounds like as tree worth propagating. Since they are already bearing, adding to an existing tree might result in bearing in a relatively short time.

On propagating them, I wonder if one could dig up a piece of root, and graft scion to the root for a new grafted tree. I have been successful at grafting apple scion to starts made from suckers from below the graft, but I have not tried grafting directly to roots. My grafting book states it can be done if one accounts for the difference in rind thickness and has species that tolerate that treatment. My persimmons are on D. lotus rootstock. So far they have not suckered but they are only 2 years old.

By the way, when the self-fertile question came up about Meader, one of the suspected agents was chestnut pollen.

Tony, you had posted some time back about success you had air layering kakis in self contained systems. How have those trees done?

I would guess that rooting persimmon cuttings to be possible but technically very difficult and not worth it for me to attempt as I would think the less cold hardy kaki roots would be a disadvantage in zones 6 and 7.

Propagating root cuttings sounds interesting, if even to be just another means of cloning a desirable rootstock, but again I wonder how technically difficult this may turn out to be.

Of course, if you buy a grafted kaki tree from a nursery in the East, it's most likely going to be on seedling virginiana rootstock. It would be interesting to see if the individual nurseries have some idea of the track record down the road of their trees' ability to resist KSD.