I think I saw some for sale on the TYTY nursery website. It says zone 9 is ok, but I'm not sure if they would be all that productive. I hear that there is a bit of research being done regarding cancer-fighting properties within the seeds. I also think that any grafted varieties need a native polinator(correct me if I'm wrong). I would love to have some in my yard. Whatever Ocala gets, I'm about a degree or two warmer.

Normally a pawpaw needs pollination from another pawpaw which is 'genetically different', which would mean any other pawpaw which wasn't a cutting or graft of the plant to be pollinated. Even a seedling of the parent would probably be genetically different.

Gary

This is timely! Paw-paw is on my list of things to buy at the nursery later this month. Please let me know if you find a source in the Tampa area, I'm about an hour and a half drive away.

In florida trees by gil nelson I read that "flag paw-paw" is relatively common in the sand scrub of the central peninsula, which certainly describes where we are. I hope to find that offered for sale in the nursery trade.

A fellow volunteer at a library gave me my 1st taste of paw paw and it got me fascinated. Her visiting friend brought some down from Tallahassee. Then I read the book, Florida's Best Fruiting Plants by Charles R. Boning for info and it says to keep seeds at low temp for several months prior to planting so 3 seeds are now in my fridge.

I'm in IRC, about 3 miles from the river, and would like to try growing them. Should I plant them in the shady area to avoid direct sun & heat? All advice appreciated. Tks.

Smallfern, did you notice the little zone map on the pawpaw page? Indian river is well south of even the yellow zone, so your efforts are unlikely to succeed. My place is right on the border between light green and yellow, so even that is iffy but maybe worth it.

I'm envious though because you can have mango and pineapple!

Uh-oh! In all the excitement, forgot to check the zone map. Tks pnbrown, won't get hopes too high now.

I've got 2 pineapples trying to grow in this cold FL winter and a mango seedling warmly protected indoors. :) Keeping my fingers XXed.

Found some native paw paws at Lukas Nursery today. They are in with the butterfly plant section. I bought two seedlings.

I'm probably slightly north of you, but I have been trying to get pawpaws growing going on 5 years now. Out of the 7 pawpaws I've planted, all in different locations around my property, from sun to shade, from low wet areas to higher land, at least half of them died within two years. One of them died completely down to the ground but came back at about 4" tall and hasn't grown an inch in two years. Another has been alive for over four years but hasn't grown an inch. One of them has grown maybe an inch or two and a couple branches (2" or so) in the last 3 years.

I just planted a mango paw paw, which is said to be one of the faster growing varieties, and it's too early to tell what it's going to do. In this area, the paw paws don't even leaf out until the summer time. Even now, there's no sign of bud swelling on any of the paw paws trees.

I've read that there are northern varieties of paw paws and southern varieties. Mango is suppose to be a southern variety from Georgia. So, it probably has a better chance of surviving than a seedling from pennsylvania. If you could get some tallahassee natives, that might be a good option too.

To me, it's a big experiment. I'm expecting another shipment of seedlings within the next week or two, to keep trying. If half of the plants survive, there is some hope that in 7-10 years, there will be paw paw fruits on the trees.

Good luck

Apparently, the seedlings I bought came from a wild local paw paw found in a cow pasture. The momma tree took three days to dig up before being transplanted. They have one heck of a tap root. I realy hopes this works. Thanks for the imput, Xentar.

Six years later, I'm still experimenting with paw paws (A. Triloba) but I have made a lot of progress. Most nurseries just send 6" or 12" seedlings with no good roots on them. I practically gave up on bare root seedlings, until stumbling on a seller in Tennessee (I don't have his info, should have kept it) that sent really good roots with his plants. At least half of the seedlings survived. The moral of this story is to find good roots, and if you have the right location for your paw paw tree, it will take off. There is no guarantee though, as they are known to be difficult to transplant. Growing them in air root pruning pots is probably the best way, short of planting seed directly into the ground and optionally grafting on to them later.

I remember the story of Eric Duckworth, who apparently used Louisiana seedlings in his paw paw projects, to create his 'duckworth' cultivars near Palatka, Florida. I haven't really been able to score any from that state, but when I moved from Tennessee seedlings to Florida panhandle seedlings, that's when I started getting blooms. I got blooms at 378 chill hours, with paw paw trees as young as four years of age and less than 3' tall.

Although I believe that paw paw trees have adapted to certain locations better than others and don't think the Tennessee paw paw seedlings that I personally have are getting their chill hours met here, I also know that there are cultivars and seedlings from even colder places, like Kansas, that will bloom with the same amount (378) of chill hours. In Central Florida, it's all about finding the cultivars (or seedlings) that will work within the chill hours you have. I have a lot more to do with my paw paw experiments, and it could take another eight years, but hopefully something good will come out of it. I would love to see fruiting paw paws available in parks, community gardens, community permaculture projects, and even along bike trails one day, in lower areas of central and north-central Florida.

I got my Pawpaw trees from a grower in Leesburg, Pietro's Pawpaws. Of the three I got from her, one is still alive, but the losses were on me. One was planted in the wrong spot and one I kept stepping on/tripping over no matter what I did to prevent me from doing so. It was a high traffic area for me and so, I guess, it was another case of Wrong Spot. The one that is still alive bloomed last Spring (its first Spring in my yard), but a late frost took out the two flowers. This spring it kept its buds closed until after our last frost and is now putting out 2 or 3 flowers. I saw a Zebra Swallowtail pass through my yard two days ago and went to check my Pawpaw for eggs, but didn't see any. It's still only about 18-24" tall, so I'm kind of glad there were no eggs yet, I don't think there is enough there yet to feed even one cat.

Has anyone been successful growing asimina triloba in central Florida?

Yes, but I have never seen a butterfly or a caterpillar on them. For Central Florida one needs to grow paw paws that are native or common to the area.

I'm the Xentar_GW from the previous posts. My largest TN seedling finally bloomed for the first time in 2015, and it produced its first two fruits in 2020. I can only guestimate that the actual tree was somewhere around 20 years old at the time, albeit I've had a Florida panhandle seedling bloom in just a few years. My grafted 'Mango' cultivar also just now bloomed for the first time this year (2022). So, it looks like the mango took 13 years to bloom in my area. As a grafted cultivar, that seems like a long time.

Compared to even northern grafted cultivars of paw paw I have, which sometime have bloomed within just a few years of being planted, I was surprised that something like the 'Mango' cultivar wasn't blooming, when the 'Sunflower' and Pennsylvania Golden had been for many years.

I haven't kept up with yearly chill hours and what has bloomed or hasn't bloomed, but in 2015, we had 378 chill hours and had enough for the Florida panhandle seedling, a TN mountain seedling, 'Sunflower' grafted, and I believe a Pennsylvania Golden grafted cultivar all bloomed. Although some have stated that the 'Sunflower' is partially self fertile, I have seen no evidence of that btw. Maybe in the north, where wild paw paws are likely somewhere in the area, they are just randomly being pollinated, and people think they are producing fruit on their own.

I'm assuming the PA-Golden paw paws are from Pennsylvania, and the Sunflower is from Kansas, Mango from Georgia, and Florida panhandle seedling is obviously from the Florida panhandle. At 378 chill hours, they all eventually produced flowers, sometimes just a couple years, for both seedling and grafted varieties, and sometimes over ten years, also for seedlings and grafted cultivars. Using the origin of each paw paw cultivar doesn't seem to be a good tool to go by, in terms of either how long they're going to take to produce blooms or how many chill hours they need.

I can tell you that, as probably one of the only people in the world that has produced flowers from Haskap in Florida, if not the only person, it's not always about the chill hours. People may tell you that there's no way you can get the chill hours needed in Florida for Haskap, but it's actually the heat that kills the plants. From my limited successes, Haskap may not need much, if any, chill hours. It may have its own internal clock, to tell it when to bloom etc.

Obviously, paw paws are different from haskap. Many don't like sun, or they may have to be started in shade, but what we really don't know is how far south they can go, and what the minimum chill hours are, for either all varieties of paw paw (asimina triloba) or some specific cultivars. I'm going to venture to guess that, one day, there will be paw paws that can bloom in Orlando, maybe even Tampa, but most of the people experimenting with them are doing it north of Florida, not in Florida, and certainly not that far south in the state. We know there are some Gainesville cultivars and maybe some of the Duckworth cultivars somewhere, which were seedlings from Louisiana that just happened to produce fruit. I don't think people will want to buy a paw paw cultivar that tastes like crap, is too small, and has too many seeds, with very little edible pulp. So, sorting out chill hours and then trying to breed in good qualities may take some time.

BTW, my TN seedling has produced more flowers this year than ever, probably over 100. It's currently in-bloom right now, and one of my smaller TN seedlings, right next to it, is also blooming, albeit far less. Hopefully we can get a good amount of fruit this year from it.

Mal W

Do you know where in FL I can purchase paw paw seedlings, or paw paw fruit? I've been searching but most places are out of stock or nursery is no longer in business. I am in North Florida.

@Mal W I’d love to get in touch with you to seen if I could experiment with your hybrid paw paw seeds down in South Florida and see how they do. Let me know how to reach out