Damaged Pawpaw Sprouts

In spring 2017 we planted forty pawpaw seeds and probably had thirty of them sprout but then had about ten die because they couldn't break out of the seed coat. I wrote about that problem here, finding that in some cases I could pull the seed coat apart and release the leaves and sometimes the leaves would mature okay. But sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes the leaves would die. And we would be left with a green stem. But sometimes the green stem had so much vitality that it would start bristling with nodules.

Here's a look at some of the nodules.

And here's a closer look, each one trying to decide if it has the energy to become a small branch.

And sometimes one of the nodules would find the energy to grow up into the sky and keep the pawpaw sprout alive in spite of the trauma of its birth.

In the end, about twenty sprouts survived to become seedlings.