Pawpaw Varieties

[Wethinkyoushouldgrow]

These are some of my notes that I recorded by tasting wilds and cultivars. Banana is a common wild one, but canteloupe is also a really strong flavor on some. I had a few wild ones that were white, and they generally had milder, creamy flavors. The ones I gathered in P.A were much more banana, the ones in Maryland tended towards Mild and had more tropical flavors.

Flavor profile Notes

Savory cheese, nutritional yeast, barm, salty melon, tomatillo, che/ mulberry.

Bitters aperol, herbal, hops

Fruity bubblegum, peachy, berry, strawberry, white strawberry

Tropical jackfruit, guava, pineapple, golden berry/ ground cherry, cherimoya.

Banana runts, brown banana, green banana, cooked banana

Caramel varying darkness, toasted marshmallow, butterscotch

Cream coconut, vanilla, icecream, pudding

Melon canteloupe honeydew

OFF FLAVORS (Not always bad, but are off-putting to most, and can be very overwhelming)

metalic- magnesium, copper, iron, potassium salt.

Fermented- rotten, yeasty, sour milk, black banana, bad wine, skunky beer, moldy, Sake, Makgeolli

Pungent- skunky, sharp cheese, bile, acrid.

TEXTURES

Firm

Melting

Avacado

Custard

Buttercream

Paste

Pudding

̶M̶o̶n̶k̶e̶y̶ ̶M̶a̶s̶h̶ Mashed banana

[JustPeachy]

@Wethinkyoushouldgrow

Monkey Mash

What the hell is monkey mash texture?!! (I’m sure if I’m going to regret asking this question…)

[Wethinkyoushouldgrow]

After a thorough Google search, I just realized that my family just called mashed bananas or icecream “monkey mash” and there is no actual name for it…

[CAvocado]

Yeaaa, I looked it up and according to ChatGPT it was like preliminary baby food made from blended banana and other fruit. Extremely liquidy but considered the first possible “solid” food that babies can eat…. Just baby food goop.

[Wethinkyoushouldgrow]

Definitely not a desirable texture. Ones with that texture are previously frozen or bruised and are also kinda slimy.

[MittenFigs]

Has anyone grown VE-19 or have any information on the variety? “Madison Citrus Nursery” has them in stock as grated trees.

[treefrogtim]

Not even sure why its in circulation. The VE-19 fruits ive seen/tasted were not impressive.

[Wethinkyoushouldgrow]

Releasing a named variety is free money for some people.

[treefrogtim]

I doubt Jerry Lehman released it himself. Maybe the ortet made better fruit than the ones I saw/tasted. Cliff England doesn’t usually offer it either. I think it just happened to be grafted at the orchard I visited. Interesting why a nursery in FL would offer it.

[weatherandtrees]

Is that the same as the VE-9 Cliff has on his site as late ripening?

[sharq]

Madison Citrus is in Georgia not Fl. They can’t ship citrus to me They actually have a pretty big variety of pawpaws for a thing thats not there speciality. I imagine they have a supplier of pawpaws in the area, and they just get whatever they grow. Or thats how they started with pawpaws anyways.

[treefrogtim]

Probably not. The VE series were some of the first crosses Jerry planted, VE-21, and VE-9 were the only ones that Cliff offered. Ive only had 21 and 19, and since Cliff didn’t offer the other ones I assume they were duds.

[resonanteye]

those look and sound wonderful

pawpaw is a nostalgia fruit for me, the flavor of “pawpaw” with a little of that custard sort of texture, that’s what i like best. the less of that aftertaste/turps the better too.

we ate wild ones from a patch where i grew up as a kid but they had no after taste.

[JustPeachy]

Maybe it was a typo? Wouldn’t be a first time a typo caused everyone to think there was a new cultivar. I’m not familiar with many of Jerry’s early crosses, you’d best ask Cliff directly for more information and clarification.

To be fair, even Jerry didn’t like all of the crosses he made. He was an experimental though very methodical and intentional breeder. He didn’t leave crosses to happenstance.

So as much as some people go out of the way to collect cultivars [specifically his cultivars], I think he’d be the first to admit some of his efforts turned out to be better than others. Having said that, Jerry did intentionally kept a relatively big “library” because even if something wasn’t that great, it usually had at least one or two traits he was trying to pass on when he made crosses.

[treefrogtim]

Could be, I haven’t tried VE-9 to have a reference. I have had VE -21 and VE -19…the ones I saw and tasted VE-21 was better(not even close). Its possible the VE-19 tree I sampled fruit from just wasn’t producing fruit to its highest potential…

[TJ_westPA]

Something that may be worth taking into account, I’ve noticed that Kentucky Champion pushes vegetative buds faster than any of my other cultivars. The others are all completely brown and look dormant still, while my 2 KC trees are showing green. We have an 80+ degree day tomorrow, before the weather cools down. Then on Wednesday morning it is forecast to get down to 24F. I’m worried that those buds will be killed and that stressor could cause ambrosia beetles to attack those trees. This happened to my oldest KC tree a couple years ago (though many others were hit too). Just pointing out that Kentucky Champion may be more susceptible to ambrosia beetle attacks due to pushing buds faster than other varieties.

[JustPeachy]

Has anyone asked woody or cliff on if this is consistently true at their sites? A sample size of one, you could dismiss as possibility rootstock given it’s always a random roll of the dice, but if this is consistent, it would be worth knowing, especially for those in AB territory.

[TJ_westPA]

It’s not a huge difference, but it’s something I’ve noticed over the past several years, to the point that I felt like I should mention it. I have KC on 2 different rootstocks of their own currently, as well as a graft on a branch of my Mango pawpaw tree. I just checked the one on the Mango pawpaw and will post that photo. It’s not pushed out as much as the 2 other trees at this point, but there is still a slight difference between it and the other grafts on that Mango tree. The photo shows KC on the right and an Overleese graft next to it on the left. I would certainly like to know if others have noticed the same behavior.