 | Pawpaw (Asimina triloba)
Photo: USDA |
Featured plant: Pawpaw
If your only experience with pawpaws (Asimina triloba) is the old childhood song "Pickin' up paw-paws; put 'em in your pocket," then you'll be pleased to know that:
first, there really is such a thing as a pawpaw, and second, it's a fruit that's native to our region.
Before bees: One interesting thing about pawpaws is that they're from w-a-a-y back in the olden days before bees. Instead, they're pollinated by beetles, who are attracted by their maroon color and their smell of, as William Cullina in his book Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines puts it, "overripe fruit or old socks."
Voluptuous flowers: Cullina continues to describe its flower as "fleshy, voluptuous, foul-smelling blooms that look as though they might decorate the parlor of a red-light district establishment."
Why would you want a pawpaw? Voluptuous flowers sound nice, but these flowers also develop into edible fruit--in fact, the largest edible fruit native to the United States.
Growing pawpaws:
* Sun to shade in moist soil
* They grow 8-25 feet high, 6-10 feet wide
* They have a taproot, so they don't like to be transplanted
* It's recommended that you plant two unrelated individual trees (i.e. not one of its clones) for best fruit set
 | | Zebra swallowtail |
Some other facts about pawpaws:
* They're also called "dog bananas"
* Cultivars have been developed for best fruit production and taste
* Deer don't like them
* It's the larval host plant for the beautiful zebra swallowtail butterfly (though they aren't often this far north)
* Its long, dark green leaves turn yellow and bronze in the fall.
If you've been to any of our talks by Don Leopold, you'll remember his enthusiasm for this plant. As he says in his book Native Plants of the Northeast, "The flowers, form, and fall colors are reason enough to plant this tree, and the tropical-tasting fruit is a real bonus." He describes the taste as the "sweet taste of banana-pineapple and the texture of custard."
So maybe you don't want the flower's "fragrance" near the entrance to your house, (though it wouldn't always be in bloom), but you may have the perfect spot a little farther out in your yard where it would be a fine addition to your habitat and your edible garden.
And you can finally be "pickin' up pawpaws and puttin' 'em in your pocket" too!
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Update: Options for Converting Lawn to Natural Areas
The webinar sponsored by the University of Maryland Extension that took place last week is now available online.
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Our Habitat Garden website
 Though not yet finished, there's enough content in much of the site that it may be useful.
There are four main sections:
* Habitat in general,
* Earth-friendly gardening,
* Creatures and their habitats/life cycles, and
* Citizen science projects.
The main content is about Janet's experiences as a habitat gardener, and the sidebars contain links to more information and resources, as well as thought-provoking reflections.
"Our Habitat Garden" is at www.ourhabitatgarden.org . |
April 2 at Baltimore Woods Nature Center. HGCNY and BWNC are co-sponsoring a workshop with Carolyn Summers, the author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East.