Ebony and persimmons come from the same genus of 'divine fruit'
The jet-black wood of fine ebony and the sweet orange persimmon both come from Diospyros, a genus of over 700 trees and shrubs. Its Greek name means roughly Zeus's wheat, or divine food. Most species grow in the tropics, where several serve as official provincial and island emblems.
Diospyros species can be evergreen or deciduous, and nearly all are dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants. Kew's database lists over 1,000 names, though only around 700 species are accepted with high confidence. Fossils from the Eocene show the genus was already spread across the Northern Hemisphere. The name itself began as the Latin label for the Caucasian persimmon, the date-plum, borrowed from Greek.
Trade splits the genus two ways. Fruit species are called persimmons; timber species are called ebony. Commercial ebony comes in pure black, notably from Diospyros ebenum, and in striped form, sold as calamander. Most species produce little or none of the dark heartwood, though harder woods such as American persimmon still see some use. A sac fungus causing leaf spot attacks several important species, including the kaki persimmon.
In the wild these trees can dominate whole ecosystems, from the dry lowland forests of Hawaii and Caspian woodlands to Madagascar and mangroves in New Guinea. Unripe fruit is bitter with tannins and most herbivores avoid it, but ripe fruit is devoured by animals such as the rare Aders' duiker of East Africa, and caterpillars of the luna moth and many other species feed on the foliage.
Human uses go well beyond timber and fruit. Leaves of the Coromandel ebony wrap South Asian beedi cigarettes. In Vietnam, Diospyros mollis dyes the celebrated black silk of Tân Châu district, and the gold apple appears in the folk tale of Tấm and Cám. Compounds from the leaves of one Philippine species have shown activity against microbes in laboratory tests. Makassar ebony is the provincial tree of Central Sulawesi in Indonesia, and the island of Ishigaki in Japan takes a local ebony as its emblem.
Source: Diospyros
