Shaken

Yesterday I told all of my many pawpaw followers that one of the pawpaws on the Wells had gotten soft enough that I was going to stop squeezing it to test its ripeness, and from here on out I would just shake the tree. I shook the tree this morning and it didn't fall. I shook the tree when I got home from work and it didn't fall. And then before we went out for a walk this evening, I shook the tree and thud it fell.

The re-enactment below took place just three minutes after the actual event of the pawpaw falling.

Shaking...

Shaken.

There it is, like a big green Easter Egg.

For perspective on the size

Up against the dying light of the sky and the peak behind our house.

So, now the pawpaw sits on our kitchen table. Still ripening a bit, since it's soft but as NJ says, it doesn't really feel soft enough yet, and there's no point in eating it before it's the best it can be.

The Problem with Counting Pawpaw Trees, in Utah or Anywhere

In August I got the idea that it would be possible to count all of the pawpaw trees in Utah. That idea set us on a course to visit the feeble BYU pawpaw orchard, a humbling experience because BYU owns so many more pawpaw trees than I do. But not completely humbling, because BYU's trees have been growing for about as long as mine have. And while the tallest of BYU's trees is about up to my knee, all my trees are about a foot taller than I am.

It wasn't more than a few days after we visited the BYU orchard that I notice the efforts that were being undertaken by the rootstock of the Wells cultivar. The rootstock, which is technically a different pawpaw tree than the Wells branches that it nourishes, decided to send up its own branches. And so, out of the mulch have grown two little "trees" (one of them bigger than most of the trees in the BYU orchard), native to the rootstock and genetically distinct from the Wells branches. 

And so, how to "count" the number of pawpaw trees in my own yard? On one hand, I might say that because they new sprouts come from the roots of the wells, they are still the same tree, genetically identical. That would work, except they're not genetically identical with the Wells branches. So, it would seem that there are two trees. To drive this home: Pawpaws are almost always self-incompatible (which means they can't cause themselves to bear fruit but they need a genetically distinct fellow pawpaw to do the job); and if I were to let the rootstock's new sprouts grow up and flower, their flowers would be able to fertilize the flowers of the Wells, and produce fruit. 

This leads to a second option for how to count pawpaw trees. This second option would be to count each grafted tree as two trees, given that its rootstock and its branches are genetically distinct. This would mean that I have seven pawpaw trees in my yard:

1. the rootstock that nourishes the Shenandoah branches

2. the Shenandoah branches

3. the rootstock that nourishes the Wells branches

4. the Well branches

5. the rootstock that nourishes the KSU-Atwood branches

6. the KSU-Atwood branches

7. the unimproved tree, whose rootstock didn't do a good enough job of nournishing the Sunflower cultivar branches (which died), and then the rootstock put up its own branches

This approach would work okay, but if I'm using as a litmus test the question of being genetically identical, then consider a scenario in which I were to have two Shenandoah cultivars and two KSU-Atwood cultivars growing in my yard. The two Shenandoahs would be the same tree (because they are genetically identical) and the two KSU-Atwoods would be the same tree (because they are also genetically identical). So that would be a total of four genetically distinct rootstocks and two genetically distinct branches, for a total of six trees (which isn't the eight trees I would have if I took the easier approach of counting each grafted tree (rootstock-branch combo) as two trees.

In some ways, then, the most accurate way to count all of the trees in Utah would be to count the number of rootstocks, and then to count the number of cultivars, and then add that number together. That would mean that if twenty-six people in Utah owned the Shenandoah cultivar, I would count twenty-six rootstocks but just one Shenadoah cultivar for a total of twenty-seven pawpaw trees. 

But none of this seems very intuitive, and all of it seems much more complicated than counting trees should be. And the definition of "tree" becomes more complicated that most people would be willing to tolerate. So what to do? 

For right now, just look at some pictures, below.

The larger of the two sprouts from the Wells cultivar's rootstock.

Another picture of the same sprout.

The smaller sprout

The biggest pawpaw on the Wells branches

The second biggest pawpaw on the Wells

The two smaller pawpaws on the Wells

Just in closing, I'll mention that the largest pawpaw on the Wells is starting to feel soft, so I imagine it won't be many more days before we have a very humble, but first annual, Utah Pawpaw Festival.

The Biggest Pawpaw Orchard in Utah?

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It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.

--Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin conceived of achieving the "bold and arduous project" of attaining moral perfection. There are other projects that are bold and arduous and would seem just about as impossible. For instance, tracking down every pawpaw tree in Ohio or Virginia--undertaking that project would be bold and arduous and impossible.

But there are other states in the United States where it would be bold and arduous but not impossible to track down every pawpaw tree that lived in the state. Utah, far from the home range, just may be among those states.

Over the past week, I conceived of that bold and arduous project. I already knew where four pawpaws lived. Certainly, I thought, with just a knowledge of the pawpaws in my own yard, I might have already located around a quarter of the pawpaws in Utah. But I began doing a little investigating, and I talked to a professor at a local university, from whom I learned about some pawpaws that were planted in 2012 (the same year as my Shenandoah and KSU-Atwood) near Spanish Fork. I got the location and permission to go look at them.

I was surprised when I got there to see how many had been planted: 32, as far as I could tell, but 12 were dead. So that's a pawpaw orchard of 20 trees. Five times more extensive in terms of trees than my pawpaw orchard.

As you'll see in the photograph above, we drove down a gravel and dirt road and then needed to stop because there was some irrigation going on. We got out of the vehicle and ran through the water, hoping to find the pawpaws.

The scene seemed far from the pawpaw habitat you would see in the East, for instance in Virginia where we used to forage for pawpaws. And the fires in California were mucking up the air, interfering with visibility, as smoke was traveling hundreds of miles on the wind.

We walked along a canal.

And past fields

Finally, we arrived at a fenced in place and opened the gate.

Inside, we saw rows of corn.

And we also found the pawpaws! I was so surprised to learn of all these pawpaw trees out in the middle of the dry fields near Spanish Fork.

Most of the trees, or twigs, had the name of their cultivar still attached. But I recalled that the professor I had talked to mentioned that most of the trees had their grafts fail due to rough conditions, so the root stock had sent up new growth. Here was a Sunflower cultivar, or at least what was formerly a Sunflower, before the graft failed and the unpedigreed root stock undertook the bold and arduous project of growing here.

And here was a Shenandoah

And then a non-cultivar

Here was one of the more robust specimens. I've been talking about these as "trees" but that word isn't quite right.

Our son W stands next to one of the trees.

To give perspective, the pawpaw orchard is in the foreground, in front of my family, an assortment of twigs hanging onto two or three or in some cases ten leaves. Behind my family, you can see a persimmon orchard, which is thriving more than the pawpaw orchard.

The California fires did make the sunset look nice.

After looking around the pawpaw orchard, we went and looked at the persimmon orchard. NJ and I used to forage persimmons in Virginia also, even if pawpaws were our number one fruit.

This persimmon was the Prairie Gold cultivar. It seemed like the most robust of the persimmons. It's name fit the environment.

Persimmon tree with prickly pears

We moved on, looking at the prickly pears. Thinking about pawpaws and prickly pears growing together seems strange, like imagining a baby opossum being separated from its mother and raised by a family of gila monsters. 

There was also some agave

It was time to leave, and we walked back past the corn and to the gate as the sun set.

Back through the irrigation water

So as of late August 2015, the tally of pawpaws in Utah that I have seen: 20 in the biggest orchard, and 4 in our orchard. But as NJ pointed out, our orchard of four is bigger than the orchard of 20, and that's true in terms of biomass.

If there's anyone else out there with pawpaws growing in their Utah yard, I'm hoping to hear from you.