The latest issue of "Fruit Gardener" just arrived (September/October 2001,
vol. 33, #5; California Rare Fruit Growers). It has 2 good articles
on persimmons, one by David Karp (the author of the recent
Los Angeles Time article on peaches that I posted a link for
some weeks ago), plus an article on the (native) American Persimmon,
Diospyros Virginiana. The latter are small, mostly wild,
highly astringent unless very ripe, but good when fully ripe.

Another article in the same issue describes a "fruit tour" of
Frank Sekiya's plant nursery on Oahu (Hawaii). The following is
from that article (p. 6):

"Not far from the cacao stood a Keppel fruit tree, Stelchocarpus
burakol. Its fruit were not yet ripe, so I didn't get to try one.
This was unfortunate for me; I wanted to see what the fruit was
like because it is known less for its taste than its effect: after
eating Keppel fruit, one's bodily excretions reportedly smell
like violets."

California Rare Fruit Growers are at http://www.crfg.org

PS better to smell like violets than durian.  :-)

Tom Billings