Persimmon

This is the American Persimmon, the first thing I've found that's edible and appetizing. Granted, people eat cicadas, but that is so unappetizing to me as to render myself incapable of eating them.
I kept passing by this tree without giving it a second thought because I was always preoccupied with the Blackjack Oak next to it. It wasn't until I noticed what appeared to be little green tomatoes growing in the tree that it really caught my attention.
These lovely deciduous trees grow between 30 and 70 feet; they prefer sun, and thrive both in forests and alone. Persimmons have male and female plants, so they can not self pollinate. They have deep roots which make them more drought resistant.
Persimmons have large oval leaves between 4-6" long. They are very glossy and shiny on the top while dull and pale on the bottom. The midvein protrudes from the back of the leaf, though it feels flattened and not round. The stem is very short (.5") and the leaves look droopy - like they're too heavy to do anything other than hang. The leaves keep a smooth, fresh feel even 24 hours after being plucked off the tree.
This is conjecture and my own experience, but all the male persimmon trees I've seen have slightly red stems and midveins on the leaves. I can't find any evidence of it online, but that's what the nearby ones look like.
The fruit of a Persimmon is between the size of a cherry tomato and a golf ball. They start hard and green and generally by the time the leaves start to fall the fruit is softening and turning yellow/orange. The shape is anywhere between an acorn and a sphere, they have 1-8 seeds, and they're topped with the four-parted round sepals (and those sepals are pretty tough).
The flowers show in May and June, they're white with four petals folding out of a bulby bottom.
The bark of a new tree is smooth and a pretty average brown. The grown tree has dark, deeply creviced, bark. The crevices are both vertical and horizontal giving the bark a checkerboard look.

There are also Texas Persimmons but they have rounded top edges to their leaves and pointed bottoms whereas the American has a rounded bottom edge and a point on the top.

Persimmons have many uses. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked, you can make molasses out of the pulp, steep the leaves for tea, and roast the seeds for a coffee substitute.