James Wesley:
As trees go dormant, you can look for saplings to transplant and seed to germinate.
In the southern US, right now is the time to look for persimmon fruit to get seeds. Persimmon grows on the edge of fields and as an understory tree. About the time of the first frost, the fruit loses it’s famous sour taste and becomes sweet like an apricot. At this point,the fruit is wrinkling and starting to look spoiled but it isn’t. Look for 1″ orange fruit hanging on bare branches in moist areas, roadsides, and power line easements. Animals eat the fruit when it drops, but horses may suffer fatal intestinal blockage (phytobezoars) from the seeds if they are allowed to eat unlimited amounts of unripe fruit.
The large dark seeds can be planted in pots and left outdoors all winter. Because persimmon tree sucker aggressively from underground roots, you can also dig up suckers and pot those. There are male and female trees, but they will have to get several feet tall before you can tell them apart.
Winter time is also a good time to transplant mulberry trees. Mulberries aren’t planted much because they are “too messy” which is to say they make too much darn fruit in the late spring. Cultivated fruiting varieties can have berries over 2 inches long, and in other countries they are a major source of food. They are one of those trees that thrive in rocky soil and harsh climates like Afghanistan, or they will grow very fast near water. We found a grove of them in a utility easement with berries over an inch long and quickly picked a few quarts by shaking them onto a tarp. These were trees that were in shade, tangled, and never pruned. A tree that gets minimal care might make 50 pounds of berries.
I have dug up mulberry seedlings and suckers which are now growing in pots. I also planted ripe berries in a pot and after about 2 months each berry had sprouted a small cluster of seedlings. The seeds don’t seem to need any treatment to make them germinate.
Mulberry is a useful hardwood and as firewood has roughly the same heat output as red oak. Persimmon is a hard high quality wood that can be used for tool handles and was used for the heads of golf clubs. Both persimmon and mulberry have been used for making longbows.
Mulberry and persimmon are useful trees that will propagate themselves and need no maintenance. A little encouragement will lead them to take over an area. Mulberry is a very early season fruit, persimmon is very late season, so they complement other crops. Both are good food for wildlife, people, poultry, or swine. And both of them produce useful hardwood. – H.C.