Lots of pawpaw

In October 2013, I posted some information about the Zebra Swallowtail and how it feeds on Asimina triloba (pawpaw) and a few other related plants. I was able to get a hold of some pawpaw seeds and so it's time to update what happened!

So, in that previous post, I talked about how these seeds must be cold stratified in order to break their dormancy so they can germinate. This can be done in the fridge over 3-4 months, but the seeds must not be exposed to freezing temperatures or they'll die. They also shouldn't be allowed to dry out. Those were the instructions I read on various websites, and so that's what I did. I was pretty busy and didn't have time in the spring of 2014 to plant the seeds. I didn't get around to doing that until the fall of 2014. I wasn't sure what would happen because the seeds would have been cold stratified for almost a year, and that doesn't happen in nature and I wasn't sure if the seeds would survive for that long. Fortunately, they did and were more resilient than I anticipated. I got about a 90% germination rate.

I had about 45 seedlings in total, and they only took a few weeks to germinate, much less time than I thought it would take. Most grew several leaves before they became dormant and all growth stopped. I wasn't sure exactly what triggered this since they were indoors all this time with more or less constant temperatures. Perhaps it was photoperiod?

Anyway, they stayed like that until the spring and that's when I decided to plant them in the backyard. I expected that the spring would break their dormancy and they would just pick up where they left off and keep growing. However, the plants lost the few leaves they did have and did absolutely nothing for the next several months! I was pretty bummed out - I thought they all died, and worse, I had no idea why. There didn't seem to be much more I could do except get new seeds and try again in the future.

By shear luck, I didn't bother getting rid of what I thought were dead seedlings, and to my great surprise, one day I noticed that some had put out new growths! They weren't dead, but just dormant.

So now I've got a bunch of happy pawpaw seedlings growing both in my yard and in the house. I'm not sure if the ones indoors will become dormant again this year, but for now they seem to be doing well and growing really fast. These above two pictures were taken 15 days apart. I'm also hopeful that the seedlings I have outside will survive the winter and keep growing next spring. They're not very big and because they were dormant most of this summer, they didn't really have a lot of time to grow and get established. Only time will tell!