Slowpoke,

Unless they are some special kind grown only in Calif. they should grow in your part of the country. I have a friend who has a tame persimmon that lives about 5 miles from me and they do just fine. He has persimmons that are 'almost' as big as tennis balls, well they are a lot bigger than the wild persimmons that grow around here. I think they are called Japanese persimmons.

Larry, Since it is from California, I am going to go out on a limb and guess it is the Oriental Persimmon called "Jiro" (long, full name in link below) merely because that is one of the most common varieties grown commercially in California. For reasons I do not understand, it is usually labeled as "Fuyu" (a different variety) when sold in stores. Maybe it is a hybrid bred from "Fuyu" or something and they decided to sell them under the name "Fuyu"because of that. Or maybe it is just, technically, a Fuyu type. Regardless, if it is Jiro, it should be cold-hardy where you live, but keep it mind it really needs well-drained soil.

Some Oriental persimmons are said to be cold-hardy to zone 6 and others are only cold-hardy to zone 7, so at least some of the Oriental types likely would grow pretty far north in OK and AR, but others won't survive our worst winters. All my life I've heard that Oriental persimmons generally cannot survive temperatures below 10 degrees, but I do know that some people who really, really want to grow them have kept them alive in a colder climate than ours, generally by wrapping them and protecting them in winter, which can take a lot of time and effort and have no guarantee of good results. To me, that makes persimmons the kind of plant I'd try to put in a protected microclimate if I was going to grow one, like on the south side of a building, or up on a hill because warm air rises, leaving cold air down below in the valleys and creek hollows below.

The other issue is whether the variety you have, whether it is Jiro or another one, would come true from seed. I am pretty sure you can grow it from seed, though it likely needs cold stratification, but I don't know if it will give you fruit exactly like the ones that produced the seed. Still, it might give you fruit that was good even if it wasn't identical to what you started with.

Now, here's the link showing Jiro:

Persimmon "Jiro"

Thanks to both of you. I may try to plant these seeds in the garden or flower bed where I can keep an eye on them and see I can get them to grow, and transplant later. I wont waste a lot of time on them because I have native persimmons on the place. I am working hard to get rid of all of the cedars, honey locust and other scrap timber, and trying to leave more nut and berry bearing trees.

We cut open one of the persimmons today, no seeds, but it was delicious. I would like to grow some but we cant because of too many critters.

Yeppers, started about 10 gallons of persimmon wine last night from fruit I picked out by Lake Texoma this last month.

Slowpoke,

I guess it has been to long since I got the persimmons from my friend, now that you mention it I don't remember any seeds in them. Well that is a plus in a way if they had seeds they might just grow just like the wild ones. Since you were just wanting to plant them for the critters in the first place you might pick some wild persimmons and scatter them around and some might get planted that way. The wild ones taste good after a freeze. Have you ever cut a persimmon seed in half to see what it predicted the winter weather to be? If it looks like a spoon there is supposed to be a lot of snow, a fork means there will be lots of very cold wind, a knife means the cold will cut threw you.

I have heard that weather lore. Has anyone looked at the seeds?

I have a friend who checked two persimmons and they both came up spoons.

authereray, I had planned to plant for critters, but these are so good I would like to harvest a lot for ME, and I don't even care a lot for wild persimmons.