American persimmon is a native fruit tree with delicious large fruits. Its wood is extremely heavy, hard and strong, its heartwood being a black ebony wood. Persimmons have been cultivated and used as an important food crop by indigenous people for thousands of years. Similar to the pawpaw or Osage orange, American persimmon fruit are characteristic of large fruit trees co-evolved with extinct North American megafauna and now dependent on humans for their seed dispersal.