Diospyros texana |
Diospyros |
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black persimmon, chapote, Texas persimmon |
diospyros, ebony, persimmon |
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Habit | Shrubs or trees, to 15 m. Bark light reddish gray, smooth and flaking. | Shrubs or trees, usually dioecious; terminal buds absent; wood dense, hard. | ||||||||||||
Leaves | tardily deciduous; petiole 0.1–0.5 cm; blade dark green and glossy adaxially, obovate, 2–5 × 1–3 cm, thick, apex rounded to emarginate, abaxial surface tomentose, without basilaminar glands. |
deciduous or persistent; petiole often glandular; blade lanceolate to broadly ovate, elliptic, or obovate, coriaceous, surfaces glabrous or pubescent, especially abaxially. |
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Inflorescences | solitary flowers or 2–3-flowered cymes, borne on twigs of previous season. |
2–15-flowered cymes (staminate) or solitary flowers (pistillate, rarely staminate). |
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Pedicels | accrescent in fruit [or not], slender, much shorter to several times longer than flowers. |
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Flowers | 0.8–1.6 cm; sepals 5; petals 5; stamens usually 16; anthers dehiscent by subapical slits; pistillate flowers without staminodes; styles usually 4, connate for most of their lengths; ovary pubescent. |
sepals persistent, often accrescent in fruit; corolla urceolate to campanulate or salverform, petals usually convolute and imbricate; staminate flowers usually smaller than pistillate flowers; stamens [6–]16(–32), paired and in [1–]2[–5] series; anthers introrse, 2-locular; ovary [3–]8[–16]-locular; ovules 1–2 per locule; styles connate proximally or to near stigmas, slender. |
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Berries | black, not glaucous, subglobose, 1.5–2.5 cm diam., pubescent. |
yellow, orange, red, purple, brown, or black, fleshy or fibrous. |
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Seeds | light red, trianguloid, ca. 0.8 cm. |
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x | = 15. |
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2n | = 30. |
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Diospyros texana |
Diospyros |
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Phenology | Flowering Feb–Mar; fruiting Aug. | |||||||||||||
Habitat | Open woodlands of bottomlands, prairie margins, rocky hillsides | |||||||||||||
Elevation | 0-1800 m (0-5900 ft) | |||||||||||||
Distribution |
TX; Mexico (Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas)
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se United States; Mexico; Central America; South America; West Indies; Africa; Asia; pantropical in wet to seasonally dry regions at relatively low to moderate elevations with temperate outliers in South America (Argentina, Chile); Asia (China, Japan, Korea) |
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Discussion | Brayodendron, based on Diospyros texana and segregated because of its apically dehiscent anthers, lack of staminodes, and coherent styles, can hardly stand up within a worldwide view of the Ebenaceae. As well as being eaten by people and wildlife, the fruits also are used in dying. The heartwood turns dark sooner than in D. virginiana; the small size of the stems limits its use. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Species 400–500 (4 in the flora). In addition to the native species, Diospyros kaki Thunberg of eastern Asia, with orange fruits to 10 cm, is cultivated commercially in California and other southern states, and some other species are cultivated as ornamentals. Two of these have become naturalized to a limited extent in Florida. Ebony is obtained from D. ebenum and other Old World species; only the largest individuals of D. virginiana have a narrow, dark core in the heartwood. The total species count for the genus is uncertain because new species are being described and the distinctiveness of some previously described species is questionable. The complicated patterns of variation in some African species of Diospyros led F. White (1962) to coin the term ochlospecies (mob or messy species) for those that are neither monotypic nor conventionally polytypic, with variation tied to geography. The three ochlospecies that he recognized had abundant variation but not in patterns amenable to formal taxonomic recognition. Diospyros virginiana gives some hints of the same kind of variation. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 8, p. 249. | FNA vol. 8, p. 248. | ||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Ebenaceae > Diospyros | Ebenaceae | ||||||||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||||||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||||||
Synonyms | Brayodendron texanum | Brayodendron | ||||||||||||
Name authority | Scheele: Linnaea 22: 145. 1849 , | Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 2: 1057. (1753): Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 478. 1754 , | ||||||||||||
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