SO DARN PROUD OF MYSELF

 

OK, these are not just photos of a spindly tree.  Well, ok, they are, but it is a special, spindly tree!  Maybe 8 years ago, I found a wild pawpaw tree that had good tasting fruit (pawpaw fruit flavor from wild trees can vary quite a bit).  I collected a few fruit, saved the seeds, cold treated them (stratified them), and raised a few trees. Last year was the first year I cross-pollinated with fruit with pollen from an unrelated tree and got a nice crop! And the fruit was just lovely, tasted great!

This year I was more careful about selecting only male flowers shedding pollen to cross pollinate my flowers.  Pawpaw flowers are considered "perfect," with both male and female parts, but also "protogynaus," or 'female first'. That is, the female part of the flower matures first, then is no longer receptive when the male part appears. This is thought to be a strategy to reduce self- pollination and increase genetic diversity, but it is one reason the pawpaw is poor at producing fruit (other reasons: their pollinators, flies and carrion beetles, are inefficient; the trees are more likely to reproduce by underground runners than sexually and: as the colony grows, the trees get shaded and flower less).  I had to make sure I had receptive female flowers, then find trees that had advanced to having male flowers, aka pollen (luckily I had scoped this out last year).

If you look at the photos above, you will see the baby pawpaw fruits circled in red (the largest cluster has 7 fruits!). It is hard to take a photos of these tiny things. I was very successful in cross-pollinating with a paint brush this year, so successful, I may have to remove some fruit as it might weight the branches down too much!

You do not have to do what I did to get  pawpaw trees, you can purchase named varieties, just make sure to get two different cultivars for cross pollination.  I just liked the challenge and adventure of doing this myself!