Persimmon

a small tree of the ebonywood family. The persimmon grows in woods and old fields from Rhode Island to Iowa and south to the Gulf. The fruit has the appearance of a plum, but without relationship to it. It is a strongly astringent, i. e., puckering, berry when green, but it becomes sweet and eatable after frosts. The wood is hard and dark, suggestive of the hard, jet black, ebony-wood of its tropical relative in Ceylon. The Japanese make much of a red persimmon resembling a fewseeded tomato.