I'm afraid it's not going to be a good year for wild pawpaws in Middle Tennessee.
I was out in the woods yesterday, and there were hardly any "fruitlets" to be seen.
Instead what I saw were a lot of flowers that looked freeze-dried - dark and shriveled. I'm afraid the very warm February followed by 2 nights of hard freeze temps may have done-in the crop this year.
On the interior of the forest, the more shaded trees had a couple of baby fruits. The trees on the edge had been coaxed by the sunlight into flowering sooner and thus were more impacted by the freeze, presumably.
There were some healthy-looking flowers still in bloom in a few places. Maybe these will produce some fruit.
On a positive note, I made 7 cleft grafts of PA Golden, Overleese, Wells, and Taytwo out in the wild patch. Not very experienced with this, so we'll see how it goes...