Pawpaws

The desire to plant trees, and be organic, and use native species burns on. And coincidentally my daughter has a passion for odd fruits and happens to think pawpaws are great (!). Well, pawpaws are a tree native to this area, with very few pests, and best of all they are an understory tree, which means they can grow in my forest!

I must say that I see this as a real opportunity for my ‘tree farm’ to get a few more trees in the system. And the state (where I got my walnut and fir seedlings) had an ‘end of planting season’ sale last week, including pawpaw seedlings. The bad news is that they sell them in minimum lots of 25, and the end of season sale is two-for-one. So here I am, committed to planting 50 more trees. It will undoubtedly be the largest pawpaw plantation in the entire state.

I’ve never had one and don’t think that I’ve ever seen one, but it's quite intriguing, and I hear it tastes like chicken. Jk, tastes like a banana-mango combo. On the other hand, the flowers are 'fetid smelling' in order to attract their main pollinator, the dung beetle. (are you grossed out?). I didn't even know we had dung beetles around here. They must fly in special due to the fragrant flowers (beauty is in the eye... or nose ... of the beholder?). The only place I've ever heard of dung beetles were in Africa in some National Geographic special. Perhaps they are all around us, but ... simply not discussed in polite circles? In any event, a most interesting plant!!!

The pawpaw seedlings arrived yesterday. Today I planted 28 of them.