The Second Annual Persimmon Report (West-Central Missouri Version)

The lure of folk lore leads us to the search inside a persimmon seed to view how our winter will unfold.

Here is the traditional version........

A Persimmon fruit has many seeds inside.
Upon cracking them open, you will find any one of the three pieces of "silverware" shapes.
• KNIFE: you'll slice through winter (mild)
• SPOON: you'll need to spoon out the snow (moderate)...
• FORK: you'll have to "dig in" (severe)...so —
...whichever you find the most of, within the seeds, is the winter prediction.

Thanks to Dave Wilson Nursery.com for the explanation.

To begin our local forecast, we choose a tree as close to home as possible, so of course we get ours along the Katy Trail.

View of leaves and fruit of a persimmon tree.

And finally close up of the fruit. Due to the extreme drought we didn't expect to find many. Squirrels around here have been eating all our apples in the back yard. Apparently, persimmons are not their favorite, lucky for us. Or at least not until they ripen.

For more lore about persimmon trees, check out ehow.com. 

There's more than just weather predicting where the persimmon tree is concerned.

We only found 1 seed in this particular fruit. 

And it predicts snow with a spoon.

So should you choose to open your own persimmon seed, 

I recommend that you proceed with caution. 

No need for disfigured fingers.