Should I remove or save my american persimmon?
American Persimmon isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. American persimmon gets removed in central Indiana for essentially one reason: a female tree dropping soft orange fruit onto a driveway, deck, patio or dog run from September into November. The species is dioecious and sex isn't visible until it fruits at around ten years old, so homeowners inherit the problem rather than choose it.
How to tell which one you've got
The killer to rule out is persimmon wilt (Acremonium diospyri) — abrupt branch or whole-crown wilt with black streaking visible in the sapwood — though it is far more common in the Southeast than in Indiana. Here a persimmon going backward usually means fill dirt over the root flare or mower and trimmer damage to that thin blocky bark; stress reads as small leaves and light fruit set, dying reads as twigs that never break bud in May.
The structural question
Persimmon is small-diameter with genuinely hard, dense, ebony-family wood and a deep taproot, so it is not one of the species that fills a phone after an Indiana ice storm. When one does fail it is typically a whole leaning trunk going over on a saturated clay edge, not the limb tearouts you see on maple and Callery pear.
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