Sept First/First Pawpaw

I wasn't there this afternoon to see it, but today NJ and W found a pawpaw fallen in the grass at the foot of the KSU-Atwood. NJ thought that it had fallen early, maybe because W jostled the tree while mowing the lawn. But she picked it up and from the smell of it, she knew it was ripe. She smelled it and kept thinking, "It smells like a pawpaw, it smells like a pawpaw," as she later told me. It's normal for a pawpaw to smell like a pawpaw of course, but it's not normal to be smelling a pawpaw here at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

Here it is, as if it knew it was supposed to fall in September, and obediently it waited until September, but once the month began it would wait no longer to fall.

NJ was sure to document the moment before bringing it inside the house

This is an authentic photo, not a reenactment, but the next few photos are reenactments,

When I got home from work, NJ told me to shut my eyes and smell and guess what it wasBut I was so confused when I smell the smell of a pawpaw's smell, since it wasn't a smell I was expecting to smell.

And I was so happy and surprised to open my eyes and see that the first pawpaw was ripe on September 1st!

After dinner with the kids, NJ and I cut it open and shared it (not with the kids). We just thought: There's 71 more where this came from, the kids will get their share later.

Pawpaw halves on a paisley tablecloth

NJ hamming it up as she worked to get the yellow pulp off one of the brown seeds

My hollowed-out half; just as I finished, W walked upstairs and said, "Hey, I wanted some--I had just wanted a little taste." So I scraped some more out and gave it to him. He said, "This tastes really good. I liked it last year, but this tastes really good." I told him, "There's 71 more where that came from--you'll get to eat several this year."

On the Cusp of September

We were out in the front yard on Sunday evening and some of our neighbors, from Mexico, stopped and talked and asked, admiringly, how we got our avocado trees to grow here in the cold. Although it meant giving up their admiration, we had to confess they weren't avocados, they were pawpaws. What are pawpaws, they asked. We answered that they're a fruit that's kind of similar to the mamey sapote (since our neighbors are from Mexico, we were lucky to be able to draw our fruit metaphors from another pantheon of fruit, a pantheon that knows something beyond tropical fruits that are mangoes, pineapples, and bananas). 

So here we are on the cusp of September, the branches burdened under the weight of large pawpaws growing as twins and quintuplets and sextuplets. Next month we'll be harvesting these avocados! (NJ's are the hands that are pictured here.)

Seeing double on the Shenandoah

More Shenandoah
 

Shenandoah singleton

Shenandoah

I guess I didn't take any pics of the Atwood, since this is the Shenandoah also

Here's the Wells, which has a lot fewer pawpaws than the Shenandoah or the Atwood. But most of its pawpaws are bigger than the ones it produced last year. And this cluster is interesting because it's been turning yellow.

Transplanting Pawpaws

The week before last, after I got back from a trip, I went over and looked at how our new Susquehanna cultivar was doing, and I saw that two big shoots were growing up beside it, shoots that were stemming from the root of the lazy pawpaw tree that I removed from the ground in the spring, to clear a space for the Susquehanna. Of course, since they were shoots from the lazy pawpaw tree's roots, I wanted them gone, so I yanked and to my surprise, they came up out of the ground with maybe ten inches of root in tact.  

Since they had so much root in tact, I decided to have a go at transplanting them. I didn't do very much special for them, except placing them among the pawpaw seedlings that I've been growing (17 out of 20 germinated, by the way). I used a pencil to poke deep and narrow holes into the soil of two of the three containers whose seeds didn't sprout. And I threaded the long roots into the soil. Even as I did so, however, I thought about what I would do with the trees if they actually rooted. I remembered that these trees were from a root stock that wasn't worth cumbering the ground. So I determined that I would show no quarter to them if they did survive--this was an experiment in the interest of science and not a sentimental chance at redemption for the root stock. See below for the sprouts among the pawpaw seedlings.

Two days later, the root stock sprouts showed that they didn't have the stuff to survive in any case.

And it's probably the case that no pawpaw sprouts with 10-inch roots would have the stuff to survive, no matter how vigorous the plant itself were. Pawpaws, as you may know, are very tough to transplant successfully. (See here they are below, curled up on the cement.)

But I have seen at least one person online who has transplanted pawpaws successfully. It looks to me like she displaces about a ton of dirt in order to transplant plants that are less than about a foot tall. It's amazing to think about the work put in by these folks at Shady Oaks Butterfly Farm.

Pawpaw Leaf Problems: Follow-up

Last month, in an entry titled "Asimina triloba: Leaf Problems," I wrote about how the leaves of two of our pawpaws (the Wells and the Shenandoah) were curling and I didn't know why. I emailed with Sheri Crabtree (Horticulture Research and Extension Associate at Kentucky State University), and she suggested it could be a calcium deficiency and recommended we give the pawpaws some fertilizer with calcium. So I did,

But after I did, I realized I wouldn't really know whether the fertilizer was helping (or if anything else was helping), since the branches seemed to have already reached their terminal leaf buds for the year. So it seemed like there wouldn't be any new growth until next spring. I also realized that even if the fertilizer was helping, I still couldn't expect the leaves that had already grown in a curled way to begin uncurling. The only cure for those leaves would be to fall off the tree and decompose.

So, how to measure whether anything was having an effect? Fortunately, I was able to find a few branches that hadn't already reached their terminal leaf buds for the year at the time I put the fertilizer on. And the one or two leaves that grew after the fertilizer application seemed to grow without the curl. (But honestly, I don't know if it was the fertilizer that did the trick or if it was that some unknown stressor in the pawpaws' environment that disappeared.)

But in spite of all my ignorance, here are some pictures with good results. 

Here's a branch with very clear leaf problems in its July leaves; but look a little higher to the August leaves and see that they developed without the curl.

Look at that edge--a scalpel's edge almost.

I've got to admit, it's getting better.

Snip!

Last year we sold our Geo Prizm to a girl (I think 16 years old) who was an ice skater. I don't remember where she lived but she said it was in a different town. Today we were driving through our neighborhood, passing a neighbor's home and we saw the Prizm parked out in front. It figures--our neighbor is an ice skater too, so they have common cause. Okay, now on to the pawpaws.

You'll remember, I'm positive, the pawpaw called C3 aka Curly Q, which was one of the first to sprout but then got it's head stuck in the mud and stayed like that for weeks, so that the sprout cornified and hardened. And even when I helped C3 get its head out of the mud, its stalk stayed curled.

It was growing in such a pleasing swoosh that I thought I would just keep it that way, and then hopefully have a little pawpaw tree that would offer something unique, aesthetically speaking.

But the other day I touched C3, and one of its leaves fell right off. You can see the leaf in the soil below the curled stalk. And I realized it was failing to thrive. I also realized I might not be able to coax it into becoming the pawpaw bonsai tree of my dreams. So, what to do? What might optimize its chances of becoming a tree or at least some rootstock for a grafted pawpaw?

Oh my, look at that--a swoosh to make Nike jealous.

So I decided that if I cut the little trunk, there might still be energy in the root and time enough in the growing season for it to put forth some new leaves and get some growing done before winter.

After I made the snip, I regretted what I had done. How could I have cut such a curly tree? Before I cut it, I'd say it had a 25% chance of becoming the bonsai pawpaw tree of my dreams.

But after I cut it, the chances plummeted to nearly zero.

Hope.

I laid the curly tree to rest among other noble pieces of plant-matter: 1) a club of wood gnawed clean by a beaver; 2) a splintering piece of desert juniper with a bulbous growth that in life was a plant's plague but in death was a human's trophy; 3) a chunk of wood that was burned by a fire long ago but was then tumbled around among rocks until the black charred parts were worn away, leaving only the most lucky or fire-resistant portions; and 4) the root of a pawpaw tree that wasn't awakening early enough in the spring and was staying up too late in the winter, now reminding me of the mandrake root in John Donne's poem "Go and Catch a Falling Star." Upon this heap of worthy peers, I laid to rest C3's tenacious curl.   

D8, Western Tiger Swallowtail Caterpillar, and Deer in Capitol Reef National Park

Last week I went down to Capitol Reef National Park with a group from church. And I woke up to five deer browsing in our campsite. Here are two of them.

On Friday I went to a family reunion in Provo Canyon and W found a caterpillar, which, by googling "green caterpillar with fake eyes," I've been able to identify as a Western Tiger Swallowtail. I wonder if this type of caterpillar would be up for feeding on pawpaw leaves? It's not the Zebra Swallowtail, which feeds only on pawpaw leaves.

After W did me the favor of letting me take some pics, he ran off and let it go.

It was also sometime around early last week or late the previous week that I noticed D8 was emerging, belatedly. That brings this batch of 20 seeds up to a 75% germination rate. We'll see how D8 does though, since it won't have all that much longer to grow before it starts getting cold.

What is a Windfall?

As you know from the previous blog post, I was out putting organic fertilizer on the pawpaw trees and found a windfall.

Windfall is such an intriguing word. Miriam-Webster offers two definitions:
1. something (as a tree or fruit) blown down by the wind
2. an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage

The Oxford English Dictionary gives some enlightening historical sentences that use the term according to Miriam-Webster's first definition:

1661   M. Stevenson Twelve Moneths 42   The wind begins to bluster among the Apples,..and the wind-falls are gathered to fill the Pies for the houshold.

1705   E. Ward Hudibras Redivivus I. ii. 17   The grizly Boar is hunting round; To see what Windfals may be found.

And then the Oxford English Dictionary gives some nice historical sentences that use the term according to the second definition:

1603   P. Holland tr. Plutarch Morals 1237   This man..who otherwise before-time was but poore and needy, by these windfalles and unexpected cheats became very wealthy.

1801   M. Edgeworth Forester in Moral Tales I. 190   He..kept little windfalls, that came to him by the negligence of customers—tooth-pick cases, loose silver.

Windfall's emergence as an "unexpected, unearned, or sudden advantage" orients us in the English language according to a certain perspective--not the perspective of the owner of the orchard but the perspective of the one who wants the fruit from the orchard but doesn't own it. The 1661 usage of the term, which has the the windfall apples gathered to make pies isn't really all that great for the owner of the orchard. If the apples had just stayed on the trees until picked, they could be used for anything, but since the windfalls have fallen before picking, they're only good to make pies (no offense to reader who like pies). As Robert Frost says in "After Apple-Picking": "For all / That struck the earth, / No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, / Went surely to the cider-apple heap / As of no worth." So, before the apples fell, they were pluripotent, like stem cells, and could become any number of things that could be of advantage to the owner of the orchard, if the owner had only beaten the wind to them. But now they're good for one thing--pies (if you're Plutarch) or cider (if you're Frost). That's the perspective of the owner of the orchard.

But the "grizly boar" isn't the owner of the orchard, as he hunts around to see what windfalls may be found. He walks on four legs and can't get to the fruit up in the tree. He counts on the windfalls, lives on them. So while the owner dreads the windfalls, those who don't own but walk through or past the orchard hope for them. And for centuries the non-owners who walk through the orchard or vineyard have had a traditional right to glean or to pick up the windfalls. Leviticus 19:9-10 gives this command to the owner: "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger." This ethics of leaving the windfall for the poor and the stranger has been a part of US and European culture. Consider the well-known (and formerly more popular) painting The Gleaners (1857) by Jean-Francois Millet.

So we have the figurative meaning of windfall, not from the owner's standpoint but from the standpoint of the poor and the stranger: "an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage." Of course, it's great that the command to the owner is to leave the windfall for the poor and the stranger. That's usually asking owners to do more than they feel comfortable with. "I could make some good pies or cider with those windfalls," they say under their breath as they suppress the fist they want to shake skyward. And then you imagine the poor and the strangers, hoping and praying for wind, knowing that wind--strong wind--may be the only way the owners are bound to part with their fruit. It would be best if owners didn't need the wind as the gauge for whether they ought to share with the poor and the stranger. But this is where we get the figurative definition of windfall, permitting someone to scrimp by on (as the 1801 sentence says) windfalls of toothpick cases and loose silver.  

No doubt I'm talking about much more than fruit, and the literal practice of gleaning has fallen by the wayside in a lot of places. Good thing no gleaners came by the pawpaw trees yesterday evening before I had picked up the windfall. A green pawpaw is inedible, and I imagine poisonous (at least, if the leaves and bark are any indication). Whereas a fallen apple may be good for nothing but the cider heap, this fallen pawpaw (fallen about a month and a half before its time) was good for nothing but dissecting at the kitchen table. 

I smelled the windfall after I opened it, and it had almost nothing that resembled the smell of a ripe pawpaw, except for a vague yeasty smell that is present but not prominent in a ripe pawpaw.

I was interested to see the seeds, so brown-black in a ripe pawpaw. And here they're white or pale yellow. And one of them was cut in half during the dissection.

I gravitated toward the dissected seed, since its innards looked so gelatinous, yet there was a structure to its innards, as if it were some type of insect egg or alien cocoon.

Then I started working on extracting the seeds so I could get a better look at the paleness of their yellowness.

What is a windfall? I've dissected it culturally and physically for you.