Life Cycle

The pawpaw tree produces flowers that bloom before both the leaves and fruit,occuring around April or early May. The flowers are strongly protogynous and most are cross-fertilized. They are usually dark maroon in color and have a strong, unpleasant odor. Many say their unpleasant odor smells like rotting meat. The fruits start to appear mid summer but don’t ripen until a few months later around September or November. To have a successful pawpaw tree it is best to plant seeds during the spring months. The trees grow best when they have some sort of shelter for the first year of growth (i.e. wooded forests, some sort of shaded area).  The Asimina triloba is a perennial which mean its lives longer than 2 years, and produces seeds, flowers, and fruits annually. As mentioned in the classification section, the pawpaw tree is an angiosperm, which means it possess both seeds and fruits. To the left is a picture of the general lifecycle of an angiosperm. Find this interesting? Check out some other angiosperms such as the passion fruit, peanut, and avacado.