I have been going to my parents' house to pollinate their asimina triloba trees. There are at least 7 to 8 fruit-bearing-size trees. One is quite large, and given the girth of the trunk, the tree is probably 10-20 years old or more. The others are similar in height but not girth. They grow in a shaded area and are probably younger.
Last year, despite abundant blooms and mature trees, only one tiny fruit was produced. There were a few small fruit clusters, but they fell off somehow. I have found a website which chronicles the development of some pawpaw fruit: http://www.watersheds.org/nature/pawpaw.htm. According to this site, it is normal for some fruits to fall off a cluster. I guess it is normal that some of the clusters fell off; however, it would seem that more fruits would have made it.
In order to help determine what may be the cause of the poor fruit production, I am going to pollinate all fowers as much as I can. I have noticed mostly ants and a few other buts crawling around the blossoms. I have not seen any flies or any other winged insects that can easily fly from blossom to blossom, so it's not a wonder that the rate of pollination is low. By pollinating, I will eliminate the low pollination factor, and I plan to wrap any small fruits in netting. The netting will reduce or elliminate the wild animal destroying the developing fruit factor. If the trees are unable to produce more fruit than last year, I will attribute the lack of fruit to the need of another genetically different pollinator. Most all literature that I read about state that pawpaws and their clones are self-infertile. I kind of hope this is not as absolute as it seems. I wonder if the botantists and others have attempted to hand pollinate clones over the process of a few years. I don't see how they can make such a blanket statement about asimina triloba because the lack of pollination could be due to inadequate insect pollinators. Once again, I only saw ants, an occasional beetle, and spiders trying to catch ants. None of these seem like they would be the best pollinators. I have hope that my efforts might pay off. Some of the flowers that I pollinated as females over a week ago turned to males about four days ago. These same flowers have run their course and the petals are drying and falling off. However,I have noticed the stems which held the flowers are still health and a ball, I assume the ovary, is still attached to the tree. According to the aforementioned website, if I have had some success, I should start to see little fruitlets within the next month. I'll try to remember to take some pictures.
