- made from the fruit of an enormous, double-trunked persimmon tree (Diospyros virginiana) which stood in the 6300 block of Central Avenue for 100 years (probably more) until November 2000, when it was taken down. Each trunk was 20 inches in diameter at the base and nearly 6 feet in circumference. The tree stood at least 3 stories high, towering above all the nearby homes and most of the other trees on the street. The word "persimmon" is of Algonquian origin, while the genus name Diospyros, from the Greek, means "fruit of the god Zeus."

It grew in the moist, former bottom lands of White River in what is now the Warfleigh residential area, where the rich soil contributed, no doubt, to the tree's size, vigor and hearty crop of sweet orange fruit nearly every year. Neighborhood lore has it that Spanish teacher Dorothy Dipple's grandmother planted that tree. (Miss Dipple, herself, was already "ancient" when my friends and I attended Broad Ripple High School in the mid-1960s).

I had a little warning about the tree coming down and gathered more persimmons than a single woman really needs. Knowing that this was the last harvest, I gave up an entire weekend to processing ...... tedious, sticky work separating precious little pulp from oversized seeds ...... and now have more than a dozen containers of sweet pulp in my freezer.

American Indians made persimmon bread and stored the dried fruits like prunes. Opossums, raccoons, skunks, deer and birds also feed upon the fruit. Friends and I witnessed the annual winter return of pileated woodpeckers to our neighborhood, drawn probably in part to the delicious and abundant fruit of this tree. What a treat to gaze through binoculars past naked intervening branches, to these magnificent prehistoric birds, maneuvering gracefully with sweeping wing beats, red crests flashing as they gorged themselves on persimmon.

I requested some of the wood, and huge sections of persimmon trunk are now strewn about my back drive. The rough, dark bark resembles small rectangular blocks, and the wood is dense and golden. For days after these trunk pieces were dumped, the tree "bled" sap from its outer layers, as though not quite accepting the reality that its life had been ended. I had trouble with that too, tears blurring my vision as I tried to count the rings. Staring at the center of these concentric layers of time, I gazed upon something born last century, something that began life before I, that had many more years of fruit stored up inside itself and wasn't ready to leave the ground.

Principle uses of the wood are for golf-clubs (persimmon wood clubs are making a comeback now, I understand), shuttles for textile weaving and furniture veneer. But this particular persimmon wood will end up in my wood stove to help warm me and the kitties next winter.

As you enjoy this homemade bread, perhaps your taste buds will encourage the imagination to wander - to a simpler time before Glendale, before the Internet, before "Bore, Gush" - back to a time and place you never knew - to rich riparian forests and sweeping fields - to a vision of Native Americans camped on the high west banks of White River savoring the very flavor you now enjoy.

I'll imagine that some of the hundreds of seeds tossed into my compost heap will sprout - nourished, eventually, by ashes of the tree that gave them birth - and carry on the history and genetic map of this regal tree for others to enjoy after I am gone.

Love and Happy New Year...........Chrissy

What I imagined 23 years ago has come to pass: some of those hundreds of seeds did indeed germinate in my compost heap. In about 2002 or 2003, I rescued two tiny young trees, nursed them to foot-tall saplings and planted them in my yard. A third tree was "planted" by squirrels. Luckily, as it turned out, one of the three trees was a female. Over the next 20 years, they grew and, as they matured, bore fruit, which was quickly gobbled up by animals. . . .squirrels, opossums, raccoons. They ate every single green persimmon; unripe ones are quite astringent and are unpalatable if eaten before completely softened, but that apparently did not bother the critters. I did not see one squirrel or raccoon with puckered up lips. This year, the animals kindly left enough persimmons for me to harvest and process about 4 cups of the sticky orange pulp. This loaf represents the culmination of my imagination and of Mother Nature's unwavering cycle of renewal and regeneration.