Persimmon Seed Buttons

Persimmon Seed Buttons
By Boyd Miles I ran across a mention of persimmon seeds used as buttons. Well, I have a persimmon tree or two near the house and I use a lot of buttons so I thought this sounded like a good experiment. Late fall early winter try to find some persimmons. I have a few around and found out they were actually different. One tree had very round fruit and the seeds were round and very flat, the other had oval fruit and the seeds were longer and thicker. The round flat ones look more like buttons but the others will work.

Step 1:

With the help of two small children I gathered a
bucketful of persimmons. This is a good activity for children, lots of sticky persimmons to play with. Place the persimmons in a pot of water and boil for a few minutes, about 5 minutes worked for me.

Step 2:

The messy part is next; one by one squeeze the
buttons out of the now firm boiled persimmons. Boiling both firms the persimmon pulp it also allows the seed to slip out of the covering, you can hardly separate the seed without boiling. The seeds will need to be rinsed and I boiled them again for about one minute to firm them up and to remove all traces of sticky pulp.

Step 3:

Dry the seeds (air dry on a plate or cloth, they will stick to paper). Drill two holes 1/16” drill bit. I mounted a bit in a short piece of dowel rod and drilled the holes by hand power but if you are careful you could use a power drill just don’t blame me when you drill through your hand.

Step 4:

I did a test wash by sewing a few buttons to a scrap
of cloth and washing and drying by machine. They held up to the one wash and should do even better with hand washing and line drying.