Over the past several weeks, my sunflower paw-paw had 15-20 flowers and I used my brush to extract yellow pollen from the older (black looking w/ leaves falling off) flowers and paint on to the younger just-opening flowers. The several fruit that looked promising last year were eaten by rodents so I'll have to do a better job of caging the fruit that I hope will grow this year. Wild Haired Mavens, I wish you luck w/ your LA paw paw. They don't do well in direct sun light (I lost 4 last year because my canopy fell off while I was away) and regardless of the species (hopefully sunflower), make sure to hand-pollinate when the flower open to get the best chance of fruits. In the meantime, paw-paws are related to cherimoya (similar taste from what I've read), which I would recommend purchasing if you can find it. They're my personal favorite fruit and can be bought from Home Depot (make sure you buy two to cross pollinate).

Like you, I recently bought a potted,grafted Shenandoah 'tiny' plant and transpotted it into a bigger pot, where it has grown OK with 2 small branches developing full-sized healthy leaves. An identicle-looking tiny grafted KSU Atwood from the same seller that was packaged the same, growing in the same kind of nursery pot, repotted by me the same into the same kind of tall pot on the same day in the same soil mix with the same fertilizing and the same watering and the same Sunlight....never had one bud on the tiny scion grow out. It's rootstock sent out a couple shoots, but even these declined and died. I have used Miracle Grow, Super Thrive, and some granular fertilizer to nourish both. My conclusion is that the tiny root system is not reliable to support the tiny grafted scion. I have more confidence in clipping off the scion and regrafting it to a mature paw paw with a developed root system. I do not know what the patent restrictions dictate, but if I am going to invest $$ on a valued scion that is only being kept alive by an immature, very vulnerable rootstock, that is not a safe bet to make again. It would be a whole lot better taken care of if it was grafted onto a "Mango paw paw that has been in the ground for several years and is 8 or 9 feet tall". I wish that paw paw roots on tiny plants were as eager to grow and hardy as,.. say,...mulberries. Maybe that would be the best focus of additional paw paw research. Vigorous hardy rootstocks.

I am aware this thread is over a decade old but it pops up on google when you search for pawpaws in Savannah, and I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that YES, pawpaws are native to Savannah, it's just that dwarf/small-flower pawpaws (asimina parviflora) are more common this far south than common pawpaws (asimina triloba). I've found OVER thirty small-flower pawpaws on Roger Warlick Drive, along the walking path that leads to the recreation field, as on July 14th 2021. Many of the plants even have fruit, and there are more on the other side of the road as well! If you are also wandering here from google, looking for where to find pawpaws in Savannah, Georgia, check out iNaturalist.org, / iNaturalist, it's a world-wide database of plants and animals that people submit, so you can find any plants that people have found in your area! Even if none show up where you are, don't be dismayed! You might be the first person on the site to obverse them, like I was with the /literally more than thirty/ plants I found just in a few days of looking! The more people who add to the database, the more locations we'll be able to share! None of the pictures are showing up from the earlier posts, but iNaturalist is also an awesome way to learn how to identify the plants, because you can see hundreds of examples, taken at all different times of the year! Long post short: Pawpaws can 100% be found in Savannah, Georgia, it will just most likely be the smaller small-flower pawpaws instead of the larger common pawpaws. But if just one person has a pawpaw tree that animals are allowed to eat from, those seeds will spread and common pawpaws might become more common here too! Don't give up hope! Check out iNaturalist to see if there are any that have been seen near you, and even if there aren't, it doesn't mean there aren't any, it just means you can be the first to add them!

Thanks for the information Lucky, thats what I thought might be the case. I will wait and see if I get any runners from teh plants. I have not seen any yet but will wait and see. My brother in Topeka, KS is having a similar problem with the leaves blackening and dying with whole branches dying. But he has portions of the trees that are doing just fine with fruit set. His are seedling trees. I guess I will just have to get them again, although Peterson Paw Paws is probably no longer in existence. I will try to find them elsewhere. Ann, I doubt Peterson will replace them, I hear he has some health issues and his website is currently down.