Diospyros kakiThunb.

japanese persimmon

WFO wfo-1000089974 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Diospyros kaki, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-25 / obs. 190578290
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. b Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 56356961
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. c Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 56003734
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. d Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 56292495
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. e Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52926982
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. f Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52831310
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. g Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52105653
Diospyros kaki, photographed by Kim, Hyun-tae
fig. h Kim, Hyun-tae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52071835

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
43987
Filed as
Diospyros kaki L.f.
Det. by
C. R. Annable 1995-01-01
Collected
C. R. Annable 1995-08-01
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 7 botanical countries

Regions where Diospyros kaki is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan, Assam, Vietnam China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastHainanTaiwanAssamVietnam
Native distribution of Diospyros kaki, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Hainan CHH
Taiwan TAI
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Vietnam VIE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 540 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.0 °C 1.3 °C 12.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.9 °C 28.7 °C 32.8 °C
Annual rainfall 666 mm 1,465 mm 2,546 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 25 mm 146 mm 353 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 540 research-grade observations of Diospyros kaki that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 28 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Diospyros amara Perr.
  • Diospyros argyi H.Lév.
  • Diospyros bertii André
  • Diospyros chinensis Blume
  • Diospyros costata Carrière
  • Diospyros kaempferi Naudin
  • Diospyros kaki L.f.
  • Diospyros kaki Thunb.
  • Diospyros kaki var. aurantium André
  • Diospyros kaki var. costata (Carrière) André
  • Diospyros kaki var. domestica Makino
  • Diospyros kaki var. elliptica André
  • Diospyros kaki var. kaki
  • Diospyros kaki var. macrantha Hand.-Mazz.
  • Diospyros kaki var. mazelii (Carrière) Mouill.
  • Diospyros kaki var. sahuti André
  • Diospyros kaki var. silvestris Makino
  • Diospyros lycopersicon Carrière
  • Diospyros mazelii Thibaud & Ketel. ex É.Morren
  • Diospyros mazelii Carrière
  • Diospyros roxburghii Carrière
  • Diospyros schi-tse Bunge
  • Diospyros schitze Bunge
  • Diospyros sinensis Naudin

and 4 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol DIKA2. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.