Discovering Native Persimmon Trees

Since i moved onto the homestead 5 years ago there’s been a number of mystery trees that were bush sized with oak like leaves but kept their leaves even when the oaks dropped theirs. I’ve always wondered what these trees were but they were too young to produce anything so there were no clues for me to glob onto. This year an abundance of little green fruits emerged on three of the tallest trees and i realized i had been looking at what was called either the Mexican Persimmon Tree or the Texas Persimmon Tree. As far as i could tell, they existed in mexico first and then when they showed up in Texas we of course thought they had no name and we should claim them as our own. Since i cant decide which of these two names they should be called i will just refer to them as native persimmon trees, since they occur naturally in this area, unlike the fuyu or hachi persimmon trees i could buy at the nursery. I had been trying and trying to find a hachi persimmon tree and then budgetwise and healthwise it just wasnt in the cards this year. I am not strong enough at the moment to dig the hole through the rock and the budget for trees has already been spent on other things this year. Well, with this discovery i forgot all about the hachi persimmon trees and began hatching a plan for how to beat the ants and birds to these developing fruits when they became ripe. The fruits were rumored to taste like prunes with a hint of licorice and they were edible once the tannins had left the scene; when the marble-shooter sized fruits turned black. One should refrain from eating many at once as it seemed they would have a prune like effect but they were classified as edible. I began to look around my homestead and realize the property was COVERED in native persimmon trees. They just werent old enough to produce flowers until this year when the three tallest ones bore fruit. They were female trees. At least one of the taller trees had to be male. Fruit would only grow on the female trees. I couldnt believe it. Those little shrubby oak like things turned out to be fruiting trees.