I have a pawpaw tree problem, and I hope someone here can help! We are in rural southern West Virginia (McDowell County), and we planted a pair of pawpaw trees about 20 years ago- I don’t know the variety- I ordered them online from a nursery. One tree died, and last year we got No pawpaws on our one, big, remaining pawpaw tree! I read online enough to be dangerous, LOL, and last year we hung raw meat in trays on the tree, to try to bring in flies to pollinate the flowers, and I also tried to pollinate the flowers myself with a brush, but since I used pollen from our one tree, that didn’t work. And there are no pawpaw trees anywhere around where we live- I looked! (Also: I don’t have a vehicle right now…) I tried to buy a pawpaw tree or two that will flower this spring (April) to plant next to it, but that didn’t work out either, and now it’s March! Apparently, I need a flowering pawpaw tree of another variety, OR flowering branches from other pawpaw trees to put in a bucket of water next to the tree, OR some pollen from other pawpaw varieties, so that I can try to pollinate the flowers myself with a brush… Does anyone here know where I can buy any of the above? I SO want to get some pawpaws this year!!
I’ll never forget Highway 52, trips to Bluefield, catching crawdads in the hollows higher on the mountains and clambering over Pinnacle Rock. Good memories.
I wasn’t paying attention to the trees back then, I didn’t even know what a pawpaw was in fact, but I’ll bet that there are some in the county just waiting for you to find them. Study them closely so you can become familiar with their branching habit and can be hiking through the woods in winter and recognize them even without any leaves just from observing those characteristics, both the asimina triloba and the asimina parviflora.
You can download iNaturalist app and see what pawpaws are nearby if you need to steal a flower (hopefully from a public/park location).
If your trees are 20 years old, maybe also just plant another one just to be prepared so you don’t have to keep trying to find flowers. You could plant any relatively newer variety and be covered (as the ones 20 years ago might be an old variety like Mango or a Peterson variety). Like Tropical Treat or Al Horn White or KSU variety like Edible Landscaping in Virginia has this KSU Benson
Have one or both of your trees ever failed to fruit before?
My pawpaws haven’t yet fruited but if I were in your situation I would order a new pawpaw tree and try to find someone local who will let you have some pollen from their tree(s). The newer cultivars supposedly fruit sooner.
Someone stupidly cut it to the ground- they killed several of my plants, including roses and a fig tree. The pawpaw was 3’feet high- it was a replacement tree, and was much smaller than our big one, and had never flowered. I have not been able to find any other trees in this area, and my husband is 79- I am not planting for the future like I did 10, 15, 20 years ago… I just want to try to get some fruit this year, if I possibly can. If I could buy a small flowering tree or two I would, but no one seems to have them…
Some ZIP codes don’t work for some reason. Try generic search like below… then move around the map on your phone to your area and click Search Map Area…
You can see in my original screenshot there are pawpaws in West Virginia, just not sure how close they are to you.
You can also try on your laptop computer, the mobile app for example didn’t let me search for a nearby city “Beckley, WV” but the web app worked and then i redid the square map area to search wider location:
My suggestion would be to buy scions of good named varieties and graft them to your tree. It may sound daunting but it’s not terribly hard.
Read other threads in the forum for suggestions of varieties. Sunflower is reportedly vigorous and a good pollinator. The Peterson varieties Allegheny, Wabash, Susquehanna (among others) get good reviews. Same for the KSU varieties Chappell, Atwood, Benson (among others).
I just tried to cut some wood with flower buds thinking I could send them and you could try grafting them and maybe they’d bloom in time - or maybe you could try blooming them inside - they were really fragile and the flower buds were knocked off just from moving them around and setting them down.
I will look to see if any branches have secondary buds which I just learned about in this thread: Pawpaws in 2026! - #305 by Blake from @Blake who might also have some suggestions.
Has anyone ever tried blooming a branch of pawpaw inside? I know it works with peach.
@WVgardengal when do your pawpaws bloom? mine usually start early April and last almost a month - I am not too far from you and maybe we could find a way for me to get you a flower.
If you could send or bring flowering branches- or pollen- I would be DEEPLY grateful- I will pay you!! My tree usually blooms in April- last year it was in full bloom on April 14- I took photos- see below. The flowers usually last for quite awhile. I haven’t cut any pawpaw branches, but I have forced many other plants and trees- forsythia, pussy willows, etc. We live right on Route 52 in Landgraff, which is between Eckman, 24829 and Kimball. (Our home is The Elkhorn Inn- it’s been our historic inn since my husband restored the building in 2002-2003, but we haven’t had any Inn guests since 2020, when my husband was fighting cancer and we lost our help. I am currently making repairs on the building, and still trying to get help…)
A couple of years ago I had tried to hand pollinate the pawpaw trees growing wild along the creek of my property, using the brush method. There are trees on both sides of the deep creekbed so I am certain that I don’t just have one clonal tree. I wasn’t successful in producing any fruit but then I read afterwards that there is a ripening process to the flower, that initially it produces pollen and then later on it is receptive to the introduction of the pollen in order to produce fruit. I think that my mistake was that I didn’t keep the soft brush in a safe location so we to not lose the collected pollen, as well as constantly try to introduce the collected pollen into the further developed flowers. There’s good information about the “how” here:
My tree usually blooms in April- last year it was in full bloom on April 14- I took photos- see below. The flowers usually last for quite awhile. I haven’t cut any pawpaw branches, but I have forced many other plants and trees- forsythia, pussy willows, etc. We live right on Route 52 in Landgraff, which is between Eckman, 24829 and Kimball. (Our home is The Elkhorn Inn- it’s been our historic inn since my husband restored the building in 2002-2003, but we haven’t had any Inn guests since 2020, when my husband was fighting cancer and we lost our help. I am currently making repairs on the building, and still trying to get help…)