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The main driving force that informs most of my plant choices for my yard is my love of swallowtail butterflies. They are some of the biggest butterflies you will see in my area and I’ve thought they were magical ever since I was a kid. My primary goal with my garden is to attract every species of swallowtail butterfly by planting each one’s larval host plant.

Zebra swallowtail, one of the more uncommon species of swallowtails, only uses trees in the Asimina genus, otherwise known as Pawpaws, as a host. I have not seen a zebra swallowtail since I was a kid, and even then, I’ve maybe only seen one once or twice. If you’re not familiar with pawpaws, they produce the largest edible fruit that is native to North America. I’ve never tasted one myself but supposedly it tastes like a mix of mango, banana, and pineapple.

The most common species of pawpaw is Asimina triloba, which grows to be around 15-30 feet tall and is said to have flowers that smell faintly of rotting meat. While I do plan to install some small understory trees in my yard, I’m focusing my efforts on keystone species such as oaks and maples. Not to mention the only areas of my yard that have the right conditions to grow Asimina triloba are right next to my patio, or right next to my neighbor’s patio. And while reports of the flowers’ smell say it really isn’t strong unless you stick your nose in a flower, it’s not a risk I’m willing to take. So how to I attract zebra swallowtails to my yard?

Enter Asimina parviflora, the smallflower or dwarf pawpaw. They typically only grow 6-8 feet tall, a shrub rather than a tree, meaning I have more options for where I can locate one in my yard. And the flowers are said to be much less stinky than Asimina triloba. The only problem? They are impossible to find for sale in the nursery trade.

Occasionally you can find a couple of plants for sale on Etsy of all places, and there have been a few wild plants sighted on iNaturalist in my area. But I’m not enthusiastic about collecting plants from the wild (and they don’t transplant well) nor do I trust random Etsy sellers to actually sell me the correct tree. Which left me with the only other seller I could find in all of my googling: Trade Winds Fruit.

I found they had decent reviews on Dave’s Garden Watchdog site, so I decided to take my chances and placed an order for 12 seeds (seeds are all they sell), which came out to $30 or the minimum I needed for free shipping.

Some reviews claimed it would take up to a month for my order to ship, but to my surprise, my order shipped about 2 days after I placed it and I had my seeds about a week later. I cannot honestly find any germination information specific to Asimina parviflora, which is what led me to write this post, and the seeds themselves came with very generic germination information. So I decided to do an experiment. I have 12 seeds: 4 I would cold-moist stratify in the fridge for 30 days, 4 I would stratify for 60 days, and the last 4 I originally planned to cold stratify in soil outside, but winter has decided to skip Georgia this year, and with temps being in the 60s, I knew that wouldn’t work. So for the last 4 I decided I would soak them for 24 hours in water and then plant them. I’ve actually had some success with soaking seeds without stratifying in other species so I figured I would try it with pawpaw too.

I tried to base my decisions off of germination information for Asimina triloba, since that information is much more readily available, but I saw the recommended stratification times were 70-100 days! You might be wondering then, why I’m not cold stratifying my seeds for longer, or why I’m not stratifying all my seeds, and the simple answer is I have not been able to stratify seeds in the fridge for longer than 30 days without them molding. I use the wet paper towel method to cold-moist stratify my seeds because I don’t have sand or pure peat moss readily available, but unfortunately the wet paper towel method is more prone to molding. I’m willing to risk stratifying a few seeds for 60 days because I’ve found a few reports that say that even if the pawpaw seeds mold in the fridge, the mold won’t hurt the seeds, but I’m not totally convinced of that and I don’t want to risk stratifying for longer. I’m stratifying some seeds for 30 days because Prairie Moon Nursery, who I usually defer to for all my seed germination how-to’s, says that in a pinch, seeds that need 60 days of cold-moist stratification can get by with just 30 days. I have found that to be true with other species I’ve sprouted so it’s worth the experiment here as well.

To cold-moist stratify seeds in the fridge using the paper towel method, wrap your seeds in a moistened, but not damp, brown coffee filter and seal in a ziploc bag. Prairie Moon recommends adding a dry paper towel in with the coffee filter, but as you may be able to tell from my photo, I wrapped the coffee filter in a moistened paper towel. I have found in the past that when I put a dry paper towel in the bag with the coffee filter, the coffee filter dries out very quickly in the fridge. I wanted to see if this helps with that problem. I store my stratifying seeds in the vegetable drawer of my fridge.

I also found several anecdotes saying the cold part of the cold-moist stratification wasn’t really needed at all and that the moist part was most important. Apparently pawpaws tend to germinate very slowly owing to the small embryo and the thick seed coat, and consistent moisture is most important in breaking down the seed coat. That’s why I decided to soak some of my seeds to see if it gives them any type of head start. I’ve found mixed reviews with some saying pawpaws are easy to germinate, they just take patience, to others saying they can be finicky, and need to be babied. The most consistent advice I found was to make sure the seeds stay warm, at a minimum above 70 degrees F, with some saying even warmer temperatures (between 75-85 degrees F), like you might get from a heat mat for seedlings, will make the seeds germinate faster.

One thing that does make me apprehensive is that almost every website and forum recommended never letting your pawpaw seeds dry out, to take them straight from the fruit into the fridge or ground, and my seeds are obviously dry. I’m not sure how they were stored prior to arriving but Trade Winds Fruit does claim they are from the most recent season. I’m not sure how any of this will affect germination. Online I’ve read that drying pawpaw seeds decreases the chances of germination down to only 20%! I did notice with the seeds I soaked for 24 hours, that the color of seed coat started to darken and they were slowly starting to be less buoyant, like they really were absorbing the water. Maybe that’s a good sign? Still, if I get even one healthy plant out of these 12 seeds I’ll be happy.

As for planting the pawpaw seeds, I decided to buy some 12 inch deep tree starting pots for them. Normally I would not go out of my way to purchase special pots for seeds. I had planned to plant these seeds in empty milk jugs, but apparently pawpaws grow a lot under the soil before you ever see a sprout emerge, and most advice I read recommended 12 inch pots. So while I waited for my pots to arrive, I threw the “plant immediately” seeds in the fridge with a wet paper towel as well. They will only be stratified for a few days but maybe it will be enough to signal to the seeds to start growing.

Like many native trees, pawpaws have strong, deep taproots so its essential to provide the roots with somewhere to go. Most natives can be started in 4-5 inch deep pots without problem, but I’ve read anecdotes that suggest the pawpaw roots could be growing for a whole month before you see any activity above the soil–this is much different from the natives I’ve grown from seed in the past! I’m going to give my seeds at least 2 months of being planted before I declare my “experiment” a failure or a success, because 2 months seemed to be the average amount of time various websites and forums suggested pawpaws take to sprout.

This is Part 1 purely because I don’t know how long these seeds will take to germinate, or if any will germinate at all. But I will happily let you know the outcome regardless. I think it’s extremely important to share experiences like this, no matter how anecdotal or how “unscientific” the experiments are. I have run across so many natives that just seem to have very limited information available, with Asimina parviflora being among them.

Do you have any experience with growing Asimina parviflora? Have you ever tried sprouting pawpaw from seed? If you have any tips or tricks, or know of any nurseries that sell Asimina parviflora, please let me know in the comments!