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#Asimina triloba
headspace-hotel · 11 months
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Pawpaw trees! I went down a little used trail and found some even bigger pawpaw groves. Pawpaws grow in clonal colonies, so the slender trunks in the third pic are most likely all the same pawpaw tree (like Pando, but on a smaller scale).
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They need shade to sprout, but they flower and make fruit only when the sunbeams can touch them! They often form splendid little groves in areas where a large tree was cut down or felled in a storm.
Pawpaws are an example of a tree that thrives best with human caretakers. When the canopy closes up and the forest floor becomes dark and shady, the pawpaw trees no longer flower and make fruit. Cutting an occasional tree and/or managing the forest as a more open woodland creates good conditions for lots of pawpaw.
Which makes good conditions for other life! The pawpaw groves were filled with frolicking zebra swallowtail butterflies.
The zebra swallowtail butterfly's caterpillars can only eat the leaves of the pawpaw, much like monarch caterpillars need milkweed! There were many of them flying around in the sunlight.
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...i tried, okay
There were loads of wasps, but they didn't bother me at all, they were too busy with their wasp business. The flies were numerous too—which makes sense; pawpaws need flies to pollinate their flowers! I saw tons of electric green tiger beetles and big tiger swallowtail butterflies. I hope the big beasts like elk and bison will be able to return soon...
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spatheandspadix · 1 year
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The iconic pairing! Pawpaws in bloom, zebra swallowtail that ate pawpaw as a larva. The understory of nearly every hillside in Athens County is adorned with stinky little dark red bells right now. Yeast and vinegar smell everywhere you go. The swallowtails nectar on all the spring ephemerals and will lay eggs on pawpaw leaves later in the season.
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aisling-saoirse · 7 months
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Finally found a paw paw tree on Campus!
Asimina Triloba - aka the Paw Paw is North America's largest indigenous fruit typically found throughout Appalachia, the eastern Midwest, the Ozarks and reaches as high north as southern Ontario. The tree itself is closely related to the custard apple, the flavor of the fruit is very similiar to banana/papaya/persimmon. Although people often rave about this amazing fruit you cannot find it in stores, quite like many forgotten foods, they only last about a week. This short life span makes trasnport difficult and cuttings are almost impossible to propagate. Essentially, all new Paw Paws must be grown from seed or transplanted from young seedlings, making consistency of a cultivar questionable.
The plant itself requires very little light making it one of the rarer understory fruiting trees. Ecologically the seeds/bark/leaves/and roots all contain a natural insecticide so the tree is rarely subject to herbivory. The most common method of propagation is clonally via root sprouts. Historically fruit was consumed by megafauna, however with most species absent in its range new plants rely on bears and human distribution.
All this being said it is a wonderful fruit which has a variety of uses, nutritionally very high in manganese and iron. You can eat paw paws raw or use the pulp in baking recipes similiar as you would a banana (I know a farmer who loves making ice cream with the fruit). Keep an eye out for them! They're not endangered and could use some attention to reenter our local food systems!
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There was a good-sized stand of pawpaw trees down by the branch at the new nature preserve. Sadly, not even the largest ones had any developing fruit on them. I think most of our wild patches are too far apart to effectively pollinate each other.
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vandaliatraveler · 2 years
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Speaking of pawpaw (Asimina triloba), Blake and I made a visit to Friendship Hill National Historic Site earlier this morning, where the only temperate member of the soursop family (Annonaceae) grows in abundance in the floodplain forest along the Monongahela River. Pawpaw is an attractive understory tree with lush-green, broadly-obovate foliage reminiscent of that of yellow buckeye; it adds an almost tropical look and feel to a riparian habitat. As an interesting aside, the larvae of the zebra swallowtail butterfly feed on the young leaves of pawpaw, whose naturally-occurring insecticidal chemicals are passed on in trace amounts through adulthood and makes the butterfly unpalatable to would-be predators.
Note: The edible fruit, which has a custard-like texture with notes of banana and mango when ripe, needs a few more weeks to mature and ripen. It turns yellow-brown when it’s ready to eat.
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rjalker · 2 years
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16,537 to go
and yes the number has jumped up by 3K because now it's sorted to show all pawpaws, not just common pawpaws. Because I may as well do them all at once.....
so yeah.
There are 13,000+ common pawpaws on iNaturalist.org so far (as of July 18th 2022 12:49AM) that still need annotations added.
There are 3,500 ish pawpaws that are species other than common pawpaw that still need annotations added.
Most of the observations of pawpaws are common pawpaws.
actually wait I can just give you the exact numbers:
Common pawpaw: 18,046
Netted pawpaw: 1,500 (Wow an exact number. that's cool)
Small-flower pawpaw: 1,483
Slimleaf pawpaw: 747
Flag pawpaw: 438
Wooly pawpaw: 405
Gopher-berry: 313
Four-petal pawpaw: 13
Manasota pawpaw: 12
Asimina colorata: 7
Asimina × bethanyensis: 5
Asimina x piedmontana: 4
Asimina × nashii: 2
Well, I say exact, this is just how the site sorts them, some of them aren't Research Grade yet (meaning they've been identified as the species they're categorized as by at least two people, or more than two depending on if there are other identifications offered)
oh wow I'm the 2nd top Observer of pawpaws on the whole site out of 11,990 people............................because I've observed 153. Except it's not actually 153 it's more like 50 a few times each since I keep track of individual plants over the course of the seasons lol......the #1 top observer has observed 458.
Those 153 observations are also all of small-flower pawpaws, which makes me the top observer for that species. I'm also the top identifier for that species, since I've helped to identify 1,293 of them.
anyways join iNaturalist if you want to learn about plants or animals or mushrooms or become really good at telling the differences between obscure species since no one else knows how to so you figure 'well I might as well do this' 'oh and there's only 15,000 observations I may as well go through and add data on whether or not the plant's flowering or fruiting or not'
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kihaku-gato · 10 months
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Alright the June orchard reports- let's start with the pawpaws
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You may remember the one autumn wherein my oldest pawpaw's young trunk got bent to the ground, as you can see that it's recovered pretty decently since! So much growth race for maturity continues. Did you know that there's an Ontarian pawpaw group where some peeps exchange pollen so their lonely trees can get a partner thanks to hand pollination? I'm used to hearing about pollen collection for daylilies, true lilies, and African violets but I nevef considered pollen trading, that's pretty cool.
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2 of the 3 younger pawpaws planted last year are fully leafed out and out joining on the growth race thanks to the supplemental water followed by rain the week after. Looks like our older tree will get some closeby partners after all, with maybe a few year delay.
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The 3rd planted pawpaw still hasn't shown any attempts at budding but you can see what I spoke about in early spring; it would appear that the half with all the important buds got snapped off from the trunk/root half. I suspect snowload cause last winter was pretty crazy for the snow heights in the orchard. Still hoping it tries to push some miracle buds or a sucker but I think the poor thing is much too young to pull that trick card out of its pocket.
Alright now for the Pewaukee apple grafts since none of you have had any photos up till now.
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Seniors first- the only successful grafted tree (which was a miracle according to the guy who's been doing our graftings, since that year there wasn't any good young scionwood to work since we hadn't done any force pruning) from last spring has been doing great and has also been taking off, may even get out of the protection tube within the growing season at this rate!
Next, the 4 grafts from this spring specifically.
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The remaining unplanted one appears to have succeeded! I removed the rootstock shoots that were below the hand so that the scionwood can dominate.
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The other planted tree's graft on the south end of the orchard has not only taken, but it looks like this one's gonna REALLY take off for its first season!
The other two graft attempts were done on two full grown trees (the plan being that those trees will be trained to have one dedicated branch just for Pewaukee.
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First was on one of our smaller trees. No dice 👎
Maybe it'll take late and push some surprise growth but I highly doubt it.
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Next and last was onto the one tree that is always first on the spring pruning queue, and was the one the grafting guy had me try to do by my own hands. I had to really stick my head into the leaves to find it to check/photograph. I'll be damned my second ever grafting attempt has succeeded!!!! I'm pretty stoked, and it's definitely making me a lil hungry to try more grafting with my own hands.
The tape in all of these should be removed mid-july according to the grafting expert so I'll have to keep that on account.
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Observation by junglemannick on iNaturalist! October 2021
Just. Look how big this pawpaw is.
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[ID: A photo of a person's hand with fingers spread wide, holding on their palm a ripe pawpaw fruit that is bigger than their palm and wrist. The pawpaw fruit's skin is light green, with a few small brown bruises and darker splotches. End ID.]
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Oversized pawpaw hair clip, 2022. Claimed.
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lena-rosey · 1 year
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We also got some pawpaws from the local Annual Pawpaw Fest. I feel like they taste a lot like Zapote, which I haven’t heard other folks say. I’m cold stratifying the seeds from the fruits for future planting, but my mom also bought a Susquehanna and a Rappahannock sapling. We’re scheming a planting spot in the back yard.
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thebotanicalarcade · 1 year
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n55_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: Medicinal plants :. Philadelphia :J.C. Yorston,1892.. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/5878113
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headspace-hotel · 9 months
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You may have heard about how herbivorous creatures like deer and horses may opportunistically prey on small animals or gnaw on bones and carcasses, well it is also true that most "carnivorous" animals will eat plants on occasion.
Many mammals we think of as "predators" are omnivorous to some extent, actually
When I was on iNaturalist looking at coyote observations, I noticed that there were lots of photos of coyote poop that was full of pawpaw seeds! Like, dozens of photos. Enough photos that pawpaws are probably a major food of coyotes in fall where pawpaws grow.
The idea that pawpaws are an "evolutionary anachronism" is a bit silly— humans have been eating and spreading them ever since the giant ground sloths went extinct, for one, but also there are plenty of mammals that eat and disperse pawpaws.
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sylvanpossum · 1 year
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pawpaws (Asimina triloba) are not monoecious nor dioecious but a secret third thing (trioecious/subdioecious)
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multifandomhoodies · 2 months
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the funniest outcome of writing a fic with chapter titles all of native trees is. well. I am going to take my arborist exam sometime this year and a tree ID is part of it and we'll isn't it great that I've memorized all these random scientific names.
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Pawpaw - Asimina triloba - flower bud just thinking about opening
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harpsicalbiobug · 6 months
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I found paw paws? At the farm stand?? I'm delight astonished. First time eating one, so yummy!
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