Just saw this.
Just noticed this is for Europe.
I have it growing right beside Jerryâs Big Girl at my place! Itâs a good fruit. Sampled it at Englandâs from Woody.
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The seeds appear to me perfectly viable. Never heard of the presence of sterile seeds in pawpaw. Also the seed count is just ordinary.
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being in Germany I am only interested in early ripening varieties⌠Halving, and Kentucky Champion are some i am focused on.
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Some (all?) of Jerryâs selections are polyploid so I reckon some seedlings could produce sterile seeds?
Iâm not great with ploidy.
But this is the first Iâm hearing that KYL is a seedling of JBG. I thought woody said it was a sport or a seedling of a Peterson varietyâŚ
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AgainâŚa biased opinion without any proof. Lower germination doesnât mean sterile seeds.
If I remember correctly, Titan is a failed graft Woody allowed to fruit and based on where the seed was from he believes it is a JBG F1. He had posted about it on Facebook, maybe his website has more information. Regardless itâs a good fruit and he claims it will ripen off the tree.
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At Englandâs Orchard Tour Woody said all of the Titan seeds are sterile. I kept some to test from the sample I had.
Are you familiar with the work done with colchicine by Sam Norris?
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Andrew Moore - Pawpaw: In Search of Americaâs Forgotten Fruit , page 230:
âThere was a gentleman in Owensboro, Kentucky, his name was Sam Norris. He was an electrical engineer , but he was a horticulturist by hobby,â Jerry explains, âand he wanted to develop a seedless pawpaw, which is a great goal. Itâll never happen - but, nonetheless, it needs to be tried.â Jerry collected material from Sam Norrisâs experiments. âAre they seedless? No. But offspring seem to produce larger fruit. Something genetically has happened there to cause those plants to be larger-fruited.â
I thought the same thing, I got a seed in my fruit sample at Cliffs and it was odd, the seed seemed much lighter than I would expect from a large seed. Iâm going to try to get it to sprout in the spring.
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If you want to add another early varieties Ogrodnick.pl will have next year âCaspianâ and probably I will get some âQuaker Delightâ scion wood.
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It is speculated that some of the seedlings Mr Norris planted out from his efforts are chimeras and displayed various levels of ploidy on different parts of the tree. Iâm not sure any of this material was ever tested in a lab to confirm or deny the genetics. IF âweâ are adding extra chromosomes to various seedlings from this work, it may yield interesting results in the next few generations. I read more about this topic from submissions to the Pomona journal of NAFEX from Mr Norris, all of which is available to download with a membership. There are only a few articles and Iâm confident much of the story is not public information. I wish I had begun my pawpaw journey a lot sooner to have networked with more of those no longer with us.
(There are many now taking up the work where it was left).
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Woody had JBG, KY Legend Titan, and Tropical treat tested for ploidy. None were triploid, but JBG and KY Legend Titan did have more slightly more DNA than Tropical treat.
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Are there any records about the origin of his trees lik SN - 7 or SN - 15 ? I donât saw any information if he use some wild stock or cultivated trees as parents.
If I see anything I will share. I donât recall any discussion on origins.
One can only hope they were seedlings of known parents.