I have a Susquehanna and a Shenandoah that I hand pollinated this year. The pollination of the Shenandoah worked producing 5 fruit that I was able to harvest. The Susquehanna produced no fruit. I saved the seeds from the fruit and intend to plant them in late December in pots. Do you think that two of these trees would be different enough to allow pollination?

When it comes to pawpaws, seedlings are often just as good as named varieties, in fact I have read plenty of posts on this forum from people who prefer fruit from their seedlings over the named varieties they have tasted.

But to answer your main question, yes, any other pawpaw tree should
make a good pollinator, and it seems that most people hand pollinate to
ensure good crops.

Thanks for all the helpful info, nmfruit. OK, good to know that I can get another pawpaw from any source and it should work fine.

Some of the better fruit I've tasted have come from seedling pawpaws, yet I would not recommend planting random seedling pawpaws for among other reasons, the fruit quality. The key to this paradox is that the superior fruit from seedling pawpaws may have been gathered from one of ten trees' fruit gathered in the wild, so while this one may have been outstanding the average wild gathered pawpaw is not. So your chances of superior fruit from a couple of random seedlings would likely be quite a bit less than from good quality grafted varieties. Now if the seedlings are progeny of touted varieties, chances are better for good results, but even then, certainly not a sure thing as with grafted plants.

The key to this paradox is that the superior fruit from seedling
pawpaws may have been gathered from one of ten trees' fruit gathered in
the wild, so while this one may have been outstanding the average wild
gathered pawpaw is not.

That makes sense. Thanks for the info, creekweb.

Also, I was wondering—if most people hand-pollinate their pawpaw trees anyway, is a second tree really necessary to produce some fruit?

Cross pollination is needed. Having a second tree is not needed. You can just graft other varieties on your one tree. Grafting paw paw is not hard. In the spring, when your tree starts to wake up and leaf out about an inch, it's time to graft. Cleft graft is fine.

Thanks for the info, rphcfb14. OK, so it sounds like to produce fruit, you need either:

a) at least 2 trees

b) a graft.

I guess hand pollination is helpful in either case?

Hand pollination is helpful because flies and beetles are not very dependable pollinators; however they do get pollinated in the wild; so, I expect that some pollination will occur without hand pollination. Hand pollination simply gives you more assurance of success.

I see—hand pollination increases the odds for success. Thanks for the info, Charlie.

At the moment I have 3 Pawpaw trees that were planted last year (2016) - two of them are Hirt's Gardens seedling trees that I bought from amazon - I was hesitant about these trees so I bought a KSU-ATWOOD Pawpaw tree because the flavor is supposed to be a combination of banana, mango and pineapple and it's the largest producing pawpaw tree at Kentucky State University with (150+) fruits and medium to large fruit - Not that I need all those Pawpaws but I figured having at least one grafted tree will get me something that is supposed to taste good and the other two seedlings will be somewhat of a gamble but hoping that they could be different or have a unique flavor - What I was getting at is that by buying a grafted tree with superior fruit and taste, you could cross it with your current tree and have a really good specimen :)

When they say no variety, another way to express it is that every seedling is a unique tree, it's own variety.

If you don't like a variety topwork the tree with a kind that you like, be aware that a lot of them taste the same. I got a few varieties but scale down a lot, same with my persimmons. Btw the way they grow quick after grafting.

Eric B. wrote:

What I was getting at is that by buying a grafted tree with superior
fruit and taste, you could cross it with your current tree and have a
really good specimen :)

OK, thanks for the info.

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garymc wrote:

When they say no variety, another way to express it is that every seedling is a unique tree, it's own variety.

That makes sense—thanks.

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Bob wrote:

If you don't like a variety topwork the tree with a kind that you like,
be aware that a lot of them taste the same. I got a few varieties but
scale down a lot, same with my persimmons. Btw the way they grow quick
after grafting.

Thanks—good to know.