hey does anybody have some pollen they can send me? i have a single pawpaw tree that is flowering. would like to try to get some fruit from it…
You can pollinate it with itself. Use a paintbrush and hand pollinate.
Pollination: natural and artificial
Pollination can be a limiting factor in pawpaw fruit set. The flowers are protogynous, meaning that the stigma (the female receptive organ) ripens before the pollen, and is no longer receptive when the pollen is shed. Thus the flower is designed not to be self-pollinated. In addition, pawpaw trees are self-incompatible, usually requiring pollen from a genetically different tree in order to be fertilized. Finally, the natural pollinators of the pawpaw–various species of flies and beetles–are not efficient or dependable. Although it requires a little extra labor, hand pollination to ensure fruit set can be well worth the effort and can be done as follows: Using a small, flexible artist’s brush, transfer a quantity of fresh pollen from the anthers of the flower of one clone to the ripe stigma of the flower of another clone. Pollen is ripe when the little ball of anthers is brown in color, loose and friable; pollen grains appear as yellow dust on the brush hairs. The stigma is ripe when the tips of the pistils are green and glossy, and the anther ball is still hard and green. Do not overburden the tree with fruit, as this will stress the tree, resulting in smaller than normal fruit, and may cause limbs to break under excessive weight.
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I know the info about them not being self fertile is all over the Internet. But it is just not true. I have fruit on my “mango” variety that is setting fruit fruit with hand pollination. There is also a member on the tropical fruit forum that has been getting fruit from his “wabash” by hand pollinating. You just have to find flowers that are in their male stage to collect the pollen and pollinate the flowers that are in the female stage. Seems to work just like pretty much every other annona
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