Persimmon Bandit

Yesterday’s pictured Persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) were not quite ripe. Here’s another: Looks ripe, but it’s still pretty hard. And they really have to be smushy soft to eat. Then they are perfumed and delicious. But bite too soon and you’ll get a mouthful of astringent tannins that you’ll rue all day long. Bleagh! Funny thing, though, there never seem to be many ripe ones. Could be bipedal foragers, of course, but I suspect that the four-legged are busy as well with this bounty. We’ve got Raccoons, Woodchuck, and:This Oppossum (Didelphis virginiana) is immortalized in an American Museum of Natural History diorama. It’s going after the fruits, although they look mighty unripe here, but then it is supposed to be getting dark in this scene.

American Persimmon is also known as Possumwood in some parts of the country. And the animals seems to be disseminators of the tree, since the seeds survive the fantastic voyage through their intestinal tracks.