The Race to Annona fruit from seed (sugar apple, atemoya, pawpaws, etc.)

General Fruit Growing
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Starting this thread to continue a discussion with @Gkight around growing sugar apples/annonas from seed and how long it takes for them to fruit. I am of the belief that sugar apples have the potential to fruit in a year grown from seed, based on what I heard.

Please share your experience/pics of your annona!

Annona Family News! As I was creating this topic I discovered Pawpaws is from the same family as the tropical fruit, Sugar Apples… This news left me flabbergasted, so much that I had to double-check if I’m using “flabbergasted” grammatically correct, lol. I don’t know if I can handle anymore surprises in this growing season.

To me, this would explain how people are growing this tropical fruit in colder climates… initially, I thought it was very strange that a tropical tree can enter dormancy instead of just dying from the cold, but being a part of the same plant family means it shares similar characteristics, so perhaps in this case, cold tolerance to a degree since Pawpaws are very cold tolerant.

grow zones (per google)
Pawpaw: 4-9
Cherimoya: 8-12
Sugar Apple: this one was all over the map, but using fastgrowingtrees site, “3-11 patio / 9-11 outdoors - hardy down to 30℉” **please note, from other sources I seen and heard via youtube videos, they all claim Cherimoya is more cold hardy than sugar apples.

Atemoya (hybrid from CherimoyaXSugarApple): 10a-11a (this is odd, because supposedly, from what I hear, this is supposed to be more cold hardy than Sugar Apple.

"The genus Annona belongs to the Annonaceae** , a family containing some fruit tree crops, such as cherimoya (Annona cherimola), pawpaw (Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal), sugar apple (Annona squamosa L.), the hybrid atemoya (A. cherimola × A. squamosa). "

source: www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/asimina-triloba

anyways, from this personal discovery, I now wonder at the possibility of getting pawpaws to fruit earlier than 5-10 years from seed, since sugar apples don’t take as long. Then again, I looked up avocados which are notorious for fruiting late from seed (10 years or so) and found they are part of the laurel family, sharing the family with berries (which are quick to fruit) :smiling_face_with_tear:

So in conclusion, after everything, Idk anymore, lol. But if we keep this thread alive, we’ll have actually proof of how long it takes for an Annona seedling to fruit and grow zone.

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Dormancy plays a major part in the time it takes for them to fruit. Everytime they go dormant, flower/fruit production takes a massive step back, as now the plant is focusing on staying alive. Since pawpaws experience dormancy in their native range (assuming we are talking about triloba and not the Florida asiminas), they would naturally produce fruit slower. Likewise, a sugar apple experiencing less than optimal temperatures will take longer for it to fruit, and longer still if it goes dormant.
Its entirely possible a pawpaw grown in a location it never goes dormant in would fruit faster. Its also possible that they would die due to not having a dormant period. As far as I know, no one grows trilobas in a location that they don’t go dormant in or completely in a greenhouse that they don’t in. Its also entirely possible they have a daylight triggered dormancy (as mine in central FL went dormant in Nov when it was 70s at night still), which is a hypothesis that I will be checking this year (and the years to come).
Overall though, I would love for any of my annona to fruit in 2-3 years, let alone 1-2. Honestly I’d be happy if all my annona seeds were to just sprout before winter this year (waiting on my Annona stenophylla still, the most interesting one!). Its a very interesting family to look into, and has a wide variety of fruits (it also looks like they are reclassifying rollinias into annonas, or at least a select few).

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Neal Peterson, expert pawpaw breeder has tried for hybrids of pawpaw and cherimoya, slight difference in ploidy.
A worthy pursuit IMO. :slightly_smiling_face:

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very interesting! That makes a lot of sense. If I have more room next year, perhaps I will try growing pawpaws indoors. I have already setup a pawpaw expedition team (aka foragers made of family members + real foragers that we’re tagging alone with) in my quest for cool fruit trees that I grew from seed.

please keep us updated on if your pawpaws enter dormancy again at 70F/less daylight, that’s just peculiar!

… anyways, I looked up apples and people in the tropics are growing them, so these apples seem to have overcome their “chill period” requirement or at least whatever apple variety they are growing can fruit without dormancy… but there are probably more apple varieties than pawpaws’ so it will be more of a challenge and also less of a need, we might be the only few people on Earth contemplating on this :joy:

never heard of Annona stenophylla, but it looks really cool! How long are you into the germination process? based on my experience/other peoples’, they have roots around 10-12 days, and probably longer depending on how old the seeds are.

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Thank you Randy! I will have to look him up.

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Got them at the start of June. They were a smaller seed than a typical annona, so we’ll see how they go. Its growth habit reminds me alot of a pygmy pawpaw (asimina pygmaea), which is a native around my area and another plant I want to get. I also want to know if this annona can spread by its rhizome for faster propagation, but there isn’t alot of info on it. I also have sugar apple seedlings that took months to germinate.

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That’s the sole reason I didn’t buy those seeds however badly I wanted to. Didn’t think I’d have enough time before it got cold for them to grow enough to not wait until next winter/spring to order the seeds. Also I have likely far exceeded the amount of plants that can fit in my tiny greenhouse, I need to start selling some seedlings just to clear room haha

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I have atemoya seedlings that are about 6 years old and no fruit yet. I have paw paws that just hang on. They are about 10 yrs in the ground and none have exceeded 4 feet. I am in South Texas and they don’t like the sun down here. I have apples as well. Even with very few chill hours they produce fruit reliably.

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That’s interesting… didn’t expect that type to have rhizomes. Yeah, I got the purple/red sugar apples and green ones, the green ones haven’t germinated yet, so probably old seeds. Fastest for the purple sugar apples was 12 days so far, still tweaking my germination method.

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That is disheartening to hear about your atemoya, have you thought about grafting a variety that fruits on it? I admire your determination to keep going though. Have you tried sugar apples? Those I heard are more true to seed (not being a hybrid and all) so you’re more likely to get fruit from them. Also, they are very cute looking, great for bonsai.

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@Gkight so I re-watched the video, lol. Link below, she grew some seedlings to be around that height and in the same batch, some of the seedlings were taller, BUT they are just under 6 months from seed. Hers were sugar apple seedlings, taking that into account, I hear atemoyas take after cherimoyas in their growth vigor, so I think it is possible that with the right amount of light and care, it could get that big or that youtuber mislabel by a few months. :sweat_smile:

this is the video with the timetable in question - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8NZoXxn1kA (his video is just too wholesome for me to think it is false… :smiling_face_with_tear:)

(this video is in Vietnamese, but the plants shown are just under 6 months of growth in Louisiana *growing zones range from 8 to 10) https://youtu.be/2GmG-4gdsPA?si=dMH7mgVsLgbfcC0b

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As far as I can see (which isn’t that far tbh) its the only one that does. It dies back to the rhizome and resprouts overwinter, pontentially being more like a primocane berry than a fruit tree. We will see, the one person I talked to who grew them said they were very small.

I have 2 sets of sugar apples, some from an unknown fruit (it was green turning purple when I ate it) and some from a bag just labeled “annona squamosa”. I also have generic soursops and 2 Whitman fiberless soursops. I’ve been holding myself back on annonas, there is so many that I want to try (like annona maritima).

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@Pokeweed

My experience exactly the pawpaw need some TLC and shade and excessive water when they are babies. Fascinating thread!

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No way. Best case scenario, zone 9b. Pretty much everything else is less hardy still, except for pawpaws of course.

Some unscrupulous nurseries do claim stuff like “3-11 patio” but that’s completely useless information. Sure, anything can be grown in any zone so long as it is brought into a controlled climate whenever outdoor conditions are bad. But that tells you nothing about what can be grown outside, in the ground.

So, the best way to describe pawpaws are as members of a tropical family that hacked a way of surviving in temperate climates. Annonaceae itself is for sure not a temperate family, and none of its members, except pawpaws, can handle extended cold or sudden frosts. It is a tropical family with a rebel genus. And pawpaws exhibit maladaptation to the cold. Sure, they go dormant and can survive, but unlike true temperate species, the plants go fully dormant, roots and all. That’s not ideal, but evolution is never about the best adaptation, it’s just about whatever is good enough for at least the average plant to reproduce on average once. That’s a pretty low bar to be honest. But yeah, even the order pawpaws are in, the Magnoliales, is overwhelmingly tropical, with just a few percent of its species in the temperate zone, and even then mostly warm temperate.

That being said, dormancy is quite common among tropical species. But it is drought dormancy, not cold dormancy. I don’t know if any members of the Annona family enter drought dormancy, but pretty much all tropical plants in arid and semi-arid zones, which means most of the tropics, exhibit drought dormancy.

Subtropical genera, like citrus, can have one of those two, or neither. Australian desert lime, for example, can enter drought dormancy, whereas mandarins have a degree of cold dormancy, and then pumeloes and limes have no dormancy whatsoever. I’m not aware of any that have both drought and cold dormancy, but it wouldn’t surprise me if species in dry-winter, wet-summer subtropical climates did, but I don’t think that’s a particularly common climate zone anyway.

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To exemplify this, most asiminas are endemic to penisular Florida, where dormancy wouldn’t necessarly be a yearly event, nor a long one. My slimleaf pawpaw was only dormant for 1 month (January to Febuary). And to really drive it home, there used to be a truly tropical asimina until they changed its family (Sapranthus campechianus). Pawpaws really are an abnomality.

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lol

At this point, you’re just name dropping! :rofl: Joking aside, you’re opening my eyes to all the different types. I love sugar apples and only recently discovered atemoyas, was planning to start a breeding project between the different types that are popular on the market but now am just dazzled at the seemingly endless possibilities.

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this explains a lot, I’m currently scrounging youtube for gardeners’ experience growing Sugar Apples in colder zones, and some are saying they either don’t water their potted plants (that they put in the garage) or if they do, very little. These are people with 5+ year old trees. I rem reading some person commenting that they watered like usually and the plant died.

I’m compiling notes as I go, mostly for temp tolerance to see what I can get away with (your comment on cherimoya grow zone makes sense)

Once I have more fruit, I’ll have more seeds, and eventually more seedlings to play with and can update on the tolerance I observed, prob with some protection though.

Winter protection is tricky, I have burnt a rare rose cutting that I cared for all winter by trying to get it outdoors sooner but my frost protection cover fried it from sun exposure… something I did not take into account. the sad thing was, rose is fine in my zone but it was my “babying” it, that killed it :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I have a few annonas from Marcos

Araticu #6 big El Dorado
Graviola de montaña
Biribia de misiones (cold adapted rollinia)

None have germinated yet but that’s normal for me with Annona

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Interesting research paper talking about the ideal conditions for growing soursop. Alot of it goes over my head, but I know alot of people are better with this stuff then I am. Was published this month, so I thought it was topical.
Soursops are generally considered the least hardy of the common annonas, yet my local big box stores was full of them in late winter/early spring (maybe all winter, I can’t remember when I started see them). The sheer amount they had makes me feel like they aren’t seedlings, so maybe they have a parent thats slightly more cold hardy. Or it was just them setting people up for failure. Who knows.

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Big box stores are notorious for selling stuff that can’t be grown locally. They’ll sell northern varieties of strawberries in the south, and they’ll sell some of the least cold tolerant citruses like limes (which get killed by even the thought of frost) in zone 8. The latter I have personal experience of–the local Lowe’s stocks limes every year, and somehow sell them too. I pity the folks who trust Lowe’s and buy them and expect anything more than dead twigs the following spring.

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