Cultivation
Kaki are grown worldwide, with 90 percent of production in China, Japan and Korea. In East Asia the main harvest time for kaki is in the months of October and November. The trees have already lost their leaves by the time of harvest. Occasionally, the brightly colored fruit is left unharvested on the tree as a decorative effect.
In China, kaki has been cultivated since time immemorial. It is considered to have four virtues: it lives long, it gives a large area of shade, it is used by the birds as a nesting place, and it is not attacked by pests. A vase adorned with a kaki cake, a pine branch and an orange is a symbol of the desire "great happiness in 100 affairs".
Throughout Asia, different healing properties are attributed to the kaki. They are said to be helpful against stomach ailments and diarrhea. Immature fruits are said to be a treatment for fever, if they ripen in containers until they are sweet as honey. The juice of unripe fruit is said to lower the blood pressure and the fruit stem to relieve a cough. To reinforce these effects, the fruit is peeled before use, exposed to the sunlight during the day and to the dew at night, until a white powder coating forms.
Cultivation of this species at first spread through East Asia. Since the 19th century, kaki partially replaced date-plum (Diospyros lotus, also known as Caucasian persimmon) in some countries of South Europe and West Asia, because kaki has bigger fruits than date-plum; cultivation in California also began at that time.
The "Sharon" is a variegated form of Kaki from Israel, named after the fertile Plain of Sharon. It does not contain seeds and tastes more mild, since it clearly contains less tannin. Cross cut, the Sharon shows a star-shaped pattern of lines with darker flesh.
In Spain, there is a variegated form of Kaki, the "Ribera del Xuquer" of the Valencia region.
Kaki is also produced in Albania, mainly in Elbasan region.
Read more about this topic: Diospyros Kaki
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)