Very Small Pawpaws

Almost as soon as I artificially pollinated the pawpaws the other evening, the petals started falling off some of the flowers. (I don't take credit for the petals falling off, I just take credit for doing the work of pollinating before the petals started falling off.)

With the petals gone, you can see what I think are very small pawpaws. Below are a few pics of them, taken yesterday.

A Pawpaw Seedling? No, a Mushroom

We went away for the weekend and when we got back last night I looked at the pawpaw planting containers to see if there had been any progress (according to what I see online, it should still be another month, but I thought maybe there would be a precocious seedling in the bunch).

At first I thought I saw a seedling rising. But then I looked more closely and it was a small mushroom. I went to bed thinking I would take a pic in the morning. But in the morning I came downstairs and found the mushroom from last night (on the left, second planter up) was bending down, as if its life cycle were already coming to an end and it were digesting itself. And then I looked and saw that another mushroom had grown over night (on the right, second planter up).

Here's a closer view of the mushroom that grew overnight. 

Pawpaw Pollination, of the Artificial Kind

Pawpaws aren't self-fertile. That means that a lone pawpaw in a garden won't bear fruit, since it can't be pollinated with its own pollen. It needs pollen from another pawpaw. But even when there are two pawpaw trees--or four pawpaw trees--together, the pollination might be slow to take place. The blossoms don't attract bees, which help pollinate a lot of flowers. Pawpaw blossoms' scent is sometimes described as "putrid" I think, which is telling, because to me, when I've smelled a pawpaw blossom, I've been reminded of Nacho Cheese Doritos. The smell is supposed to attract flies and beetles I understand, which is also telling, in relation the question of the US population's affection for Doritos. But in any case, I'm not even sure the right kind of flies and beetles live here in Utah.

So if I wanted to be sure our pawpaws got good and pollinated, I decided I should take things into my own hands. I've read online that using a paint brush on the blossoms can work well to bring about artificial pollination for pawpaws. So this evening, after work and the kids' track meet, I undertook the project, mixing it up among our three trees that currently have blossoms.

NJ did me the favor of taking some pics as I retrieved the pollen from one tree and took it to another. And then retrieved the pollen from that tree and took it to another. And then retrieved the pollen from that tree and took it to the first.

Is this how it works, I wondered?

Well, here goes.

I wanted to smell the Nacho Cheese Doritos smell that I remembered, but for some reason I couldn't smell it, even when I put my nose up against the paint brush. (Maybe it was too cold this evening for the nacho-cheesy pollen to sublimate into my nostrils?)

Back to work.

After awhile, the brush got pretty pollinated, so hopefully the blossoms were following suit.

Finally, I put my shoulder to the wheel and got the brush  as covered in pollen as I could, since I've got a plan.

I'm going to save this brush as it is, covered in thousands of pollen grains. And in three weeks, when the fourth pawpaw's flowers bloom, I'll bring the brush back outside. And I'll help the final tree get pollinated.

So I placed the brush in an old Coke bottle, with a clamp paperclip attached to the handle so it doesn't fall into the bottle.

While I was working on the artificial pollination process, two neighbors stopped by and it seemed clear that I needed to explain what I was doing. So I told the first guy that stopped by that I was artificially pollinating the fruit trees. He replied, "Oh they need a little help huh?" And the second neighbor who stopped by, when he heard about the artificial pollination, asked if the pawpaws would be able to take care of that themselves when they got older. And he told me his cousin had a job like that, except on a ranch. Attracting this type of quality talk with the neighbors was enough to make me glad we planted the pawpaws for all to see in the front yard!

Pawpaws' Progress

I've been busy with work but I've wanted to post some pictures of how the pawpaws are doing, as they're flowering. (These pics are from today.) Soon I'll want to go out there and use a paint brush to help them all get good and pollinated. Meantime, take a look at the blossoms. The Wells blooms first and has the most blossoms (it's older than the rest). And then the Shenandoah and KSU-Atwood follow the Wells, And then the unimproved pawpaw lags behind. It's clock is slower. It wakes up later in the spring and stays up later in the autumn. I think the only way to get it pollinated by the others will be to take a paint brush to the three cultivars, get the paint brush good and polliny, and then save the polliny paint brush for a few weeks until the late blooming pawpaw's flowers open. And then, well, use the polliny paint brush on the late blooming flowers.

If I were to make a song about this cultivar with all its flowers on it, I would title the song "Well's Bells," with apologies to the band AC/DC (which just announced today that Axl Rose will become its lead singer for awhile; whut?)

It wasn't a bright day today, so the color of the flowers isn't very intense. But even when it's a bright day, the color isn't very intense from several feet away. The tree looks like it's covered in black  bells.

But you get a little closer and the colors brighten up.

A really nice green and purple.

Still looking at the Wells.

Here's the Shenandoah blossoming. Strange how crepey the petals look, which isn't how the Wells or the KSU-Atwood petals look.

Here's the KSU-Atwood.

And then the last two shots are of the tardy sticks and incipient blooms of the unnamed pawpaw.