Having lived a while, I notice that the old varieties of fruit lose their taste when hybridized. Don't know if that's true of persimmons. We had Wold River apples back home in Michigan--the trees are still producing, but rarely picked on the back of the property. Ive never found apples that taste quite the same as apples off the tree--no wax, no shellac, just the way they were for 100 years or more.
