Persimmon leaf
The leaf of the Japanese persimmon, dried and brewed as kakinoha-cha in Japan and gam-ip-cha in Korea. It comes off trees planted for fruit, which makes it another by-product drink like olive leaf and mulberry.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Diospyros kaki
- Family
- Ebenaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- China, Taiwan and Myanmar; cultivated rather than native in Japan and Korea, where the leaf is drunk
- Drunk in
- Nara, Wakayama, Korea
Character
Mild and slightly hay-like with a soft green edge, similar in shape to a light bancha. Nothing about it suggests the fruit.
Notes: hay, green tea, dried leaf
History
Persimmon has been cultivated in Japan and Korea for over a thousand years and the leaves have been dried domestically for about as long as the fruit has been grown. It became a packaged product only in the twentieth century and remains a minor one.
How it is drunk
Drunk in rural Japan and Korea, often from a household’s own tree, and in Japan the leaves also wrap kakinoha-zushi in Nara — a use with nothing to do with drinking. It is a regional drink rather than a national one in either country.
Production
Young leaves are picked in early summer, steamed briefly, cut and dried. Steaming is what keeps the colour and stops the leaf browning, and skipping it produces a much duller cup.
Preparation
Infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 85–90 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Leaf from fruiting orchards is normal and there is no separate cultivation for it. Spray residues are the practical concern and provenance is usually unstated.
Common mistakes
- Expecting persimmon flavour. There is none — the leaf and the fruit have nothing in common in the cup.
Related botanicals
- Mulberry leaf — Steamed leaf from fruit trees, processed like green tea and tasting like a mild one.
Comparisons
- Persimmon leaf vs loquat leaf — Two Japanese orchard-leaf drinks, both by-products of fruit growing and both regional rather than national. One is steamed like a green tea; the other is usually roasted, which makes it a different sort of drink.
- Mulberry leaf vs persimmon leaf — Two East Asian orchard and plantation leaves, both steamed like a green tea, both by-products of growing something else entirely.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Diospyros kaki Thunb. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Persimmon leaf is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.