The Texas Persimmon is not my personal favorite of all fruit, but it is well-loved by many other friends and neighbors from my past in rural central Texas. The small green persimmons ripen into soft fuzzy sweet dark fruit the size of a toddler's fist. As this occurs, the mockingbirds start hanging out in the vicinity. We had one wild shrub below our mailbox, and for a couple of months, that would be a hangout - the mockingbird diner. Golden-fronted woodpeckers visited the shrubs - and I wonder if bats at night ever showed up. Roadrunners, jack rabbits, yellow-billed cuckoos, black-chinned hummingbirds, and armadillos were nearby and may have enjoyed persimmons, but I can't say I ever actually saw them with a persimmon. The most amazing visitor was a tortoise - with a shell about 10 inches in diameter. Perhaps we would never have known of his existence in our neighborhood except for the persimmons - and later in the fall, the fallen berries beneath the pyracanthas. He ate both persimmons and pyracantha berries with great gusto.

Our Texas Persimmon trees were more like large shrubs than trees, reaching maybe nine feet in height maximum. The leaves were small, dark, and shiny, I believe - well suited for surviving the sometimes arid summers, and dusty, limestone soil.