Still getting some wild ones just north of you. These heavily shaded spots are real season extenders.
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Justpeach gave me some paw paws, different cultivars. I must say pawpaw are different. Pawpaw tastes more tropical fruits , strong aroma, sweeter than stone/pom fruits . I had sugar apple before. Since it is a relative of the sugar apple , paw paw and sugar apple share something in common like the sweetness, like a little gritty taste sometime mixed in the creamy texture. But I like pawpaw’s texture and aroma is better than sugar apple’s.
I haven’t finished all the pawpaws that justpeach gave to me yet. I had Mango, Shannondoah, West, and Central. Mango has the largest size but less strong tropical flavor/aroma. I am not impressed by West. Shannondoah are on the small side. One I tasted was a little blend . But the second I ate was sweet so I think the flavor has a lot to do with the location of the fruit on a tree, or size of the fruit. Maybe bigger size will taste better. Central is similar to Shannondoah in sweetness and texture. I like to eat at really ripe at point that the skin starts to brown. If you buy a Cherimoye at supermarket, you want to buy the one that has brown skin. Same way go with the pawpaw. When the skin turned brown, the sweetness, the aroma, the creamy texture are all at the peak. So all the pawpaw I ate so far are all sweet, it is only the matter of degree of the sweetness. I can eat several peach/pear/plum a day through out the season but I don’t think I can eat pawpaw every day. If there are both pawpaw and peach/pear:plum in front of me I more likely will select peach:pear/plum. I like pawpaw but I think stone fruits are better.
The biggest drawback of pawpaw I think is the fruit size and a lot of large seeds inside. The pawpaw that justpeach gave me mostly are small to very small. I am not sure normally how large a pawpaw gets. If the pawpaw tree grows the paw paw size all this small, I don’t think I want to grow pawpaw myself. It just too much work for me.
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You’re right on that. It’s crazy how long some of those will hang on.
Too bad I’ve yet to find any good wild pawpaws down here!
Got some from a spot on the Little Harpeth river and they were terrible. 
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Lol, I really envy people who live in areas where they say the wild pawpaws all taste good. I’ve found some patches where all the fruit I tried there were just awful. Some can have no sweetness, little good flavor, and high amounts of bitterness. Those cause me to spit them out almost immediately.
I have found that green ones, or unripe ones are lack of sweetness, or flavor. But all the ripe ones I have tasted were sweet in certain degree, some were sweet like a good mango, maybe even sweeter than a good mango. For those who are not familiar with tropical fruits’ flavor may not like pawpaw. But if you like mango and can stand theun smel of ripe banana you might want try pawpaw. It a lot likes a fruit that has mango texture , sweetness, and banana smell
@TJ_westPA @TrilobaTracker I dunno where these magic patches of pawpaw are. Or maybe we have more discerning taste buds. 
I think the ratio of good “wild pawpaws” is probably like 5% in comparison to current cultivars (not necessarily other wild). Even among the second and third generation of crosses of current cultivars, there are a lot of let downs. KSU has hundreds of plantings, which are progeny of Peterson pawpaw and other older cultivars like Overleese. Yet, still they only choose to release 3 cultivars (Atwood, Benson, Chapelle) to the public. The rest didn’t make the cut.
Or maybe it’s a lack of options. If you only have wild pawpaw, it maybe one of those “I can put up with x quality.” Once you reach the point of “all-you-can-eat” of newer cultivars, it’s hard to say you’ll reach for wild instead.
For those reading and following along, I wanted @IL847 to post her taste thoughts to demonstrate how wildly taste can skew preferences. I prefer pawpaws still green, avocado firm texture. She prefers than more ripe, more brown, when there is that caramel developed flavor. @tonyOmahaz5 for example likes a cultivar temporarily known as “West” (seedlings are named for their location in the plot), describing it as mild Cherimoya like, and will tolerate some brown but not much. @IL847 didn’t care for “West.” @Barkslip doesn’t like them when they go brown at all. Our definition of ripe varies widely, even though I everything I gave @IL847 either pulled free easily or fell off the pawpaw tree.
Size here is small because Neal’s friend doesn’t thin. Small fruit in pawpaw doesn’t mean small seed though. Seed size doesn’t change regardless of fruit size. Thinning is the difference between a lot of fruit with large seed and less flesh vs fewer fruit with larger seed and more flesh. Neal mentions that distal fruit from the main trunk often is smaller in size even with thinning. I do thin, so there are substantial size differences on my own tree. My Allegheny fruit is more than 5x larger in some cases. Terroir also seems to play a slight role. Even though I am only an hour away, my Allegheny was said to be the best Allegheny Neal’s friend had tasted in 10 years, noticeably less phenolic, but I have black loam soil for at least 2 feet, while orchard where I collected the fruit to give to @IL847 has hard deadpan yellow clay soil about 2-4 inches below the top soil
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I have had good if not great wild pawpaws. One tree I’ve propagated in my orchard in fact (not doing great, so hasn’t fruited yet).
@Vid has shared some very good wild ones too, from only 60 miles or so away.
And of course as you know, many of the old school tried and true varieties are wild selections - Sunflower, Mango, and I think Overleese to name a few off the top of my head.
The wild ones here are bad mostly due to the strong phenolic taste and watery texture.
The good ones are nearly as good or as good as a named selection.
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I think the second generation cultivars (wild selection x wild selection) are better than the wild selections though (first gen). As we hit newer generation releases (I consider KSU to be 3rd gen), I’m thinking it’s probably harder and harder to find what is better.
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Makes sense to me!
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@JustPeachy @TrilobaTracker @IL847 @TJ_westPA and others, I have been trying hard to find the thing I’ve consumed previously in my life that is most similar to pawpaw taste and I THINK I just had an epiphany. Have any of you heard of Tampico juice? Growing up I believe we bought some on trips out to Phoenix when we were visiting relatives. I am pretty sure they make a couple different flavors but one of them is almost like a knock off of “Sunny Delight” drink. I cannot remember which version of the Tampico juice reminds me of pawpaw flavor, but the residual smell on my fingers after processing a few tonight brought back the memories of the juice. Off to find it at a store somewhere to pinpoint it I guess…
Edit: definitely adding @Barkslip to the list for an opinion if you’ve had it before.
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Hmm! I think I’ve seen it (maybe?) but have never had it. Will have to look for it!
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http://www.tampico.com/products
I want to say it was the Island Punch, Mango Punch, or Tropical punch I’m thinking of, but it was a long time ago and they might not even make the one I’m thinking of anymore. I’ll report back if I find it.
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I know of the drink which you speak of… I had it years ago, and was never a bit fan. 
I’m guessing you are thinking of either Mango Punch or Pineapple Coconut Punch. I could understand why you’d go there, but still not on the dot for me.
I even get it when people talk about White Sapote (@mamuang), Cherimoya (@tonyOmahaz5), but it’s still has a flavor and aroma of its own. I still wouldn’t use those fruits to describe a pawpaw. It’s much more like a very concentrated banana to me. (I’m pretty sure it has loads of Isobutyl acetate similar to a banana.) Crossed with a myriad of other compounds Annona fruit combined with a very yeasty note.
To me, it’s more banana mango pineapple with perhaps a very strong nutritional yeast like undertone and some background astringency. I get different impressions from different cultivars though. Like Shenandoah to me is more banana than anything else. Maybe a bit of mango. When I talk about the more “heavy flavored” cultivars like Susquehanna, it’s more tropical flavors like pineapple maybe stronger mango undercurrents.
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According to the interwebs, Citrus Punch was the original flavor…
Though I agree that the Mango version nominally sounds more like how pawpaw taste is described.
@JustPeachy if Shenandoah tastes like white sapote, I would be a huge fan. Love white sapote. (I adore Cherimoya too, of course. while I have detected some slight cherimoya flavors in my Lehman’s Chiffon pawpaw I would say they are very different fruits.)
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It’s not an easy to describe fruit, yet something about it makes you think of so many other familiar fruits.
If you were to taste it blind, in my mind, there’s no way to not mistake for something from the Annona family, though.
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Maria’s Joy all fell off today.
This is another one of my last year grafts ----> this year fruiting pawpaws.
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Public Service Announcement from someone known to some of us… I don’t have a dog in the fight… I only eat one a year, if that many. I’m not saying they are or are not good - and I’m not gonna argue the case one way or another.
1.) DO NOT CONSUME DRIED PAWPAWS- this will result in terrible gastrointestinal distress (OK, this one, I’ll testify to!)
2.) Moderate your intake of pawpaws. They might seem like the greatest fruit, but they are also a powerful medicinal containing neurotoxins.
From a 2020 paper titled “Annonacin and Squamocin Contents of Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) and Marolo (Annona crassiflora) Fruits and Atemoya (A. squamosa × A. cherimola) Seeds.”
“In conclusion, analysis of 18 more samples of lyophilized
pawpaw fruits showed that this fruit has much more
annonacin than the first sample that was analyzed previously.
Moreover, the total of annonacin and squamocin was higher in
the pawpaw than in any of the other fruits analyzed so far. This
includes marolo fruits, which had never been analyzed before.
Still, it may be possible to grow specific cultivars of pawpaw
trees that produce fruits with lower levels of neurotoxins.”
(See assayed levels of annonacin and squamocin in pulp from named pawpaw selections in table below)
These compounds have been incriminated as possibly contributing to development of atypical Parkinson’s-like symptoms.
Also, this:
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Let me know your opinion on this one. Have only tasted once.
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Good advice! I’ve seen that chart before, and one of the things that intrigues me is the variation within varieties where more than one fruit was sampled. In the paper, do you know if all fruits sampled were at the same level of ripening? I don’t know how expensive/difficult it is to test the levels, but it would be interesting and valuable to test 1. more varieties, 2. multiple samples of each variety (get median values and sense of range), and 3. some sense of how that varies across ripening, thinning, shade, etc., within a given variety. I know #3 is a BIG ask probably spanning multiple PhD theses, but that could really help a lot with evaluating and managing risk.
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@scottfsmith @SMC_zone6 I still rather have more peaches…
Box 15+ now… I’m running out of guine… I mean adventurous friends.
The biggest one went to Ken. I’ll taste mine separately tonight. I’ll let you know as soon as I crack them open.
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