Pawpaws are native to this area as well of most of the eastern U.S. I planted 7 trees and two began producing pawpaws after three years growth. It's surprising...it's hard to see the fruit. It is close to the stem and usually hidden by the large leaves. As to taste...if you've ever had a cherimoya it's a lot like the taste of pawpaws. They look like they're in the same family although cherimoyas are tropical. I like them...not as much as cherimoyas but then I don't live in the tropics...lol. I have mine planted as understory trees. They get direct sun but not all day.

"No offense mrtexas, but which fruit do you actually like? I've seen your opinions on several forums and it seems you're always disappointed with some fruit or other (OK, I'm mainly thinking about certain types of citrus, and now pawpaw)." I go thru a continuous improvement program on my fruit trees. Out for various reasons are pawpaws, cherry of the rio grande, barbados cherry, panzarella orange, panzarella lemon, pomona sweet lemon, vainiglia sanguigno orange, republic of texas orange, strawberry guava, goumi, "cold hardy" citrus, mortenson grapes, muscadines, limequats, wekiwa tangelo, tarocco blood orange, ujukitsu sweet lemon, meiwa x nagami seedless kumquat, valencia orange, bloomsweet grapefruit, sulcata(sanbokan) sweet lemon Most are out because they don't taste as good as the best of what is available, don't do well in SE Texas or are over-hyped by certain nurseries. TreeSearch nursery of Houston, TX hypes the sour mortenson bunch grape and the very average Republic of Texas orange for what reason other than to sell them I don't know. There isn't much information on the web for many of these fruit duds. In with me are miho satsuma, fairchild mandarin, sanguinelli blood orange, orlando tangelo, nova mandarin, clementines, cara cara red navel, golden grapefruit, changshou kumquat, norman seedless nagami kumquat. IMHO these are the best of the best. Still under evaluation but promising for SE Texas(I haven't tasted them yet) are xie shan satsuma, miyagawa satsuma,duncan grapefruit, marsh grapefruit, valentine grapefruit, pomogranite, 88-2 lee x nova and 15-150 lee x orlando mandarins, pong koa mandarin, ponkan mandarin. You can't say I haven't tried growing and harvesting a wide variety of fruit. Here is a link that might be useful: mrtexas

I got mine in a trade from someone here but I don't remember who. I have no idea where they got them. I hope it grows. I'm going to keep it on the seed mat and put it outside in June (in a container) if it lives that long. When I looked it up I read that the seeds could take 4 weeks but I had no way of knowing how fresh they were so I didn't toss them so fast. I'm glad I didn't. I have a number of seeds that have sporadic and/or long germination times and have a tendancy to forget about them. I have recycled soil before and had surprises growing in the containers, especially certain pipevines and passion flowers. I must have at least 10 pots of plants that have an extra plant growing with them. Karyn

hoovb, thanks for the idea about asking my local nursery to order them...did't even cross my mind! Rodgers is about an hour away from me, I gave them a call but sadly they tell me they have no pink kangaroo paws anymore. But thanks for the tips, hopefully my nursery can run some down for me.