Anyone have PawPaw fruit?

Does anyone have any fruit from a PawPaw?
I've been killing myself trying to keep my seedling alive and want to get more,and realized I don't even know if I like pawpaw's .....LOL
So,anyhow,I'd like to try one to see if its worth it to me.I know there are different varieties and each tastes different,but I'd really like to try one if anyone has one to spare......silly ,I know ,but I only like to kill myself for things I like to eat.....

I have heard of Paw-Paw's but never seen or eaten one. Now you have me curious!

Picking up paw paws puttin em in a basket.

I will ask my mother when I go to town today. Ernie

OH MY!!!!!!

Are they good?
Do you eat them?

Mother kind of remembers so I typed in paw paw and found a place called Nature Hills Nusery who says they sell these things

grow 30 feet high
takes two to fruit
fruit about four inches long
taste kinda like banana
$10.95 ea

Any way Thats what I found enjoy. Ernie

I have a small paw paw grove in my woods and was going to trade seeds , but we had this terrible hail storm this Spring and we didn't have blackberries or walnuts or anything. Looking forward to a better season next year.

Kathyjo,do you eat them?
Are they good?
Worth growing?

eweed,I can find them for sale places,I have 2 seedlings I've been nursing along.What I want is a fruit to taste to see if I personally like them......its not something they have at our local grocery store......

Karyn, everything I read says the fruit is seldom available commercially as it has a short shelf life when ripe, which is usually Sept.-Oct. You have to be careful when using a search engine because paw-paw is also a name given to papaya in some places, esp. Australia. Kentucky State Univ. has a research program on paw-paw and it contains enopugh information to make me want to grow them! http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/

Ohio has an annual Paw-Paw Festival. http://www.ohiopawpaw.org/pawpawfest.html

From another site:
"The pawpaw is a delicious fruit indigenous to this country and was eaten by native Americans and early settlers. The fruit has a distinctive creamy custard texture and a sweet mango banana like flavor. It is excellent when eaten fresh, and delicious in puddings, cookies, pies, ice cream and breads. Pawpaw fruit is reported to be higher in proteins and carbohydrates than apples, peaches and grapes, and it contains high levels of amino acids, vitamins A and C, and many minerals."

CC, This small grove I have is in deep woods and I never seem to get any fruit to taste, due to squirrels. I had done some research and one possibility for no fruit would be that I have all female or male grove. They like to branch out from the root system and therefore with such asexual reproduction, be all the same sex. I have thought to try to move a tree or two from other spots there to see if I could increase my fruiting. Or see if I could get seeds from another source and just plant the seeds there.
These are beautiful trees. I don't know if some of the commercially grown trees would produce more and bigger fruit or not. They might not be as vigorous as this wild variety.
Also because most of my little trees have branched out from the "mother" tree they would be pretty difficult to move I think. No tap root. Any ideas on this anyone?
Certainly if I am successful next year I would be happy to send you some fruit, not only for the seed, but to see how it tastes. You would certainly have to remind me. If I was to send you seed, I know they shouldn't dry out, and mailed in peat moss or something similar.
Also the blooms on the trees are fabulous. Waxy, kinda brown and unusual.
I had a disappointing season with my fruit and nuts. I am certainly looking forward to the coming year.

I haven't tasted pawpaw fruit, but I planted two seedlings this summer. The mail-order nursery recommended planting in those tree tubes so I put them in there, and they shot up several feet over the summer. I'm sure it will be several years before they fruit, but I think the leaves are very interesting and plan to enjoy them in my yard. Fruit would be a bonus (or not, if it's icky).

Eileen

I seem so far to be the only who has tasted paw-paw. The native trees around here do produce fruit, but they are on the small side (sort of kidney shaped averaging 1.5 inch across)and so full of seeds, there is very little flesh. It is hard to time harvest, too green - they never ripen, too ripe, they are black and have fallen to the ground where the squirrels and other critters have enjoyed them.

I did go to the paw-paw festival near Athens, Ohio, 2 years ago and got three big pawpaws. Size of smaller mango - texture & taste between peach and banana.

OOHHHH they sound so good........

I guess I'll keep nursing them along........and maybe buy some named hybrids

I just received the first pawpaw catologue produced by Neal Peterson, the man responsible for most of the research and content on the KYSU sites. He has three new varieties that are superior to many, if not all of the other commercial varieties. His site is now up at www.petersonpawpaws.com. It's a bit rough yet, but the products, contact and order links are working. He'll send you a paper catalogue for the asking.

I've eaten PawPaw many times and for that reason I sought and bought 2 trees a couple years ago. I thought for sure they were dead last spring but finally began to have new leaves in late June or early July. They are native to Missouri if my understanding is correct. A few people around here do have trees.
I went to the website listed but could only get on page to open. The others came up but had no information on them. I guess they are still under construction. I've read much of the information from KU on pawpaws. A man called Lucky was involved in it and we corresponed for awhile.

Don't give up on your seedlings or waiting for the seed to germinate. I have an elderly friend who has a grove of Pawpaws in the back part of his property. He shares the fruit from his trees with me. Darius, you are correct; they are very fragile fruit and don't ship very well. He brings me tree ripened fruit which fall from the tree. We salvaged several seedlings which came up there and planted them in my yard almost two years ago. Transplanting is also difficult as they have a very long tap root. Pollination is another difficult matter. They bloom before anything else does...the bees and such are not active and the blossom depends upon the carion flies to pollinate. The bloom simulates dead meat odor and fools the fly into thinking it is finding something to eat. Folks who have poor pollination are encouraged to take home "road kill" to hang in the trees to enhance pollination. I can hear some of you react like a dear friend who lives in a very upscale neighborhood and has lots of property...she said "I don't go there!" LOL

I peel my surplus fruit and place in ziplock freezer bags for later use. Who knows, Darius, if I get to the Knoxville RU, I may bring Pawpaw Bread or Cookies! Here are some recipes to consider.

http://members.aol.com/BLaneKY/recipes.htm

http://ces.ca.uky.edu/Woodford/fcs/newsarticles/2003/f082903.htm

I am sure to have plenty of seed this summer and will provide some for you. Here are the instructions for Germination and growing instructions.
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/ppg.htm

I hope this information has been helpful to you.
Gary/Louisville Kentucky

I grow and hybridize paw paws. If you need any seed please don't pay for them. I will be glad to send you diploid seed or tetraploid seed. Just let me know!

WOW!!!!!!

Please Oh Please!!!!!!!

Great! you got the message!! Like I mentioned, the seeds have been stratified all you have to do is plant them.

The seed will germinate quickly once they warm up but they will only put down their tap root. It will take approx one month for the seedlings to break from the soil and show any leaves. Just keep them quite moist. You might want to pot them in a deep pot due to their tap root.

They are a lowland tree which can take lots of water when you put them out. Try and put them out when the soil is about 80 degrees. They will grow about 2' the first year.

You have mail !

KYBRED: Why tetraploids? Shooting for a seedless? How did you come up with the tetras? I'm into breeding too, but not with pawpaws yet.

Tetraploid paw paws have much larger fruit and the trees are quite a bit more robust. The seed are unfortunately larger as well!

A chemical called colchicine is what is used to double the chromosomes of the plants.

Crossing the diploids with the tetraploids would be a way to produce seedless. When a plant has uneven amounts of chromosomes it is usually sterile. (seedless grapes, bananas etc.)

Wow, the flower is so pretty! How old do the trees have to be before they bloom, and then how much older before they reliably set fruit? Is there a difference in the age at which the trees fruit when they are tetraploid or diploid? Are there other differences (than the fruit and seed size)?

KYBRED: sending you email.

Eileen

The photo shows 4 pawpaws. The flower is small and brown and appears in early spring. (I only saw this the first time when a forest ranger pointed it to us on a Spring walk - it took awhile to find out which were the pawpaws across the creek on our property after we moved here, and we certainly never noticed any blooms on them before that).

Most of the paw paw trees set fruit in their 5th year if they are properly watered and if they don't suffer any significant trauma when planted out.

The paw paw trees set fruit 10 times better if there is two trees close to each other. Once established the mature tetraploid trees can set fruit that weighs a pound or more!

The seeds that I have on my tradelist are from orange/yellow fruiting varieties. There is a white fruiting strain but it doesn't seem to have the taste of the orange/yellow variety.

My biggest question is......

Does it taste good??

I grew up eating paw paws and love the taste. When asking people what they taste like you will get many different answers. I think they taste like a cross between a banana and a cantalope! The fruit is very aromatic. To me it smells like Juicy Fruit Gum! There is a fine line between when the fruit is ripe and when it can taste over ripe.

KYBRED: Have you had any contact with Neal Peterson? I think you two could would come up with an interesting and worthwile collaboration that would bring pawpaws another decade closer to being a viable alternative crop. I have some information on creating tetraploids with Oryzalin if you are interested.

Most people who have had the opportunity to eat pawpaw fruit fall into one of two camps - and there's usually no waffling - they either love them, or find them disgustingly insipid.
Most Americans are no longer 'comfortable' with soft, fragrant/aromatic fruits, after multiple generations of eating crisp, almost tasteless apples purchased from the grocery; hence, most people don't care for a pawpaw or a good ripe American persimmon.

I was high on pawpaws for a number of years, but I'm afraid I'm sort of burnt out on them. I still like to eat one or two, but after that, I've 'had enough', and don't care for any more for another year or so.

Nice, ornamental tree in its own right, however, and a nice addition to any native or edible landscaping scheme.

I'm still dying to try one.....

The banana/ cantalope combo comes closest to me, but there is a bit of mango as well, messy but good, Also like the mango underipe is rough tasting, have it wild down at the camp, bears erraticly sometime nothing sometime 1 or 2 sometimes dozens, doesn't seem to be the year either as different clumps show different patterns, best bearer in near a creek and about a foot above water level in sandy acidic soil. Paw paw pie is good, liquer is rough fresh eating is by far the best.

They have beautiful very large leaves that take on good color in fall. But I'm dying to ask this pretty knowledgeable bunch about WHY my mature paw paw seems to set fruit, then they fall off and die. Actually I can't tell if it is dried up fruit thats falling or what. It is a seed pod - kind of reminds me of sumac seed heads. I have the flowers, then they seem to dry up and fall off. Some of them almost look like a small paw paw fruit that stopped ripening and blackened and fell off. I have 2 more paw paws in the woods nearby that are about 15' tall but I don't think they flowered last year. Maybe this year. The mature tree is at least 40' tall and flowers readily.

I remember paw paws from my grandparents farm as a kid. They are a unique taste that I remember liking. The texture is like a ripe mango if I recall. Of course you can't buy a ripe mango here you have to get them in S. America so maybe not too many have had them. Also persimmons - which I would love to taste off a tree again.

There's a Talponia spp. moth that lays its eggs in the pawpaw flowers, then when the larvae hatch out, they burrow into the stem of the fruit, and cause it to abort.
Here's a short blurb from the KYSU Pawpaw page:
"The worst pest is Talponia plummeriana, the pawpaw peduncle borer, a small moth larva (about 5 mm long) that burrows into the fleshy tissues of the flower, causing the flower to wither and drop. In some years this borer is capable of destroying the majority of blossoms."

Oh that is just great. I wonder how you find out if you have this disgusting creature. Or what to do about it!
a

don't you need 2 flowering for pollination?
could it be that the fruits abort because there was no pollination?
maybe when the 2 younger trees bloom you'll get fruit on the older tree

Thats what I was thinking too crestedchik - but I was hoping that someone who has grown them would know more about it.

Between late frosts, hail and drought, there is a total crop failure here, anyone else get any fruit?

bermuda - I've not had a chance to check the wild pawpaws around the farm, but I've got a small-flowered pawpaw(A.parviflora) that I selected from plants on my parents' farm just outside of Auburn AL, grafted onto A.triloba rootstock that has its typical heavy crop of fruit(though I'm growing it for sentimental reasons moreso than for the fruit).
We had a major hailstorm here in early April that beat most of the fruit &/or blossoms off of almost all the other fruit trees - don't know how the pawpaws fared.

crestedchik & alyrics - yes, you need at least two different varieties(either two seedlings or two different grafted selections - or a combination of the two) in order to get reliable fruit set. As KathyJo indicated, sometimes isolated clumps/groves are actually just a clone of one single seedling - as the root system spreads out, it sends up suckers, and although there may be 20 or more stems/trunks in a clump, they might all be, for all intents and purposes, the same plant; without another genetically different variety nearby to provide pollen(and appropriate pollenators present), these clumps of trees may not be able to set fruit.

Lucky - how could wild paw paws have set fruit then? I'm not even close to claiming you're wrong but it doesn't make sense to me. My grandparents farm only had 1 paw paw up near the house that I remember. Also, are they kind of a short lived tree, and don't they like - or tolerate a bit more moisture than most? I have one down near a creek bed that broke off at the top - must have been in a storm, its now produced a new leader.

They had an old persimmon too. That huge tree has to be 120 + years old. They have Indian graves on their farm and Grampa covered them up with the biggest rocks he could haul to keep (us) the kids from digging them up. That old persimmon was right in the middle of them. The farm's been in the family since the mid-late 1800's.

I have the A.parviflora. It was a native plant in my backyard. I did not know what it was until I sent the pix through the identification forum. http://home.comcast.net/~sterhill/paw_paw/mystery.html

This year the two larger purchased plants had a couple of flowers that never developed but the wild one - the parviflora - still has some small fruits. I was told that it was self-pollinating. I've had the purchased plants about 4 or 5 years and this was the first flowering.

Here is a pix of the fruit on the wild one as of a month ago...

A.parviflora is self-pollenating.
To my knowledge, there are no other parvifloras within hundreds of miles of my grafted selection here, and it still bears a heavy crop every year.
Unfortunately, parviflora fruits 'aren't much to write home about' - small, mostly seed with a thin rim of pulp around them.

Some A.triloba selections are reputed to be at least partially self-fruitful, but all will produce heavier crops if there are other, genetically different, plants nearby to cross-pollenize with.