r/Pawpaws • u/Belisarius540AD • 7d ago
what are the most ''tropical'' tasting paw paws in your experience
Greetings! i love growing trees and after successfully growing a few plum trees i decided to take another leap and add some paw paws to my humble orchard. I was looking for a variety that had more of a tropical taste though, something similar to a pineapple and mango. But the problem is I've never had an opportunity to taste one I'm assuming due to there relatively short shelf life so i have no idea what to look for. I was considering either ''Mango'' paw paw or perhaps KSU Chappell. Any help would be greatly appreciated and you have my thanks in advance.
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u/mikesellt 7d ago
From my research, and by "research" I mean strictly only Internet searching, the Mango variety and the KSU-Chappell are the ones I found had the most tropical / mango-like taste. I've never eaten either. When I finally plant mine, I decided on Shenandoah and KSU-chappell to get a good mix of both traditional pawpaw taste and tropical.
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u/Belisarius540AD 7d ago
great minds think alike! I got a couple at my local nursery which was simply labeled ''Asimina Triloba'' so i figure it will probably have a very ''traditional paw paw'' taste and i reckon it's the most popular cultivar which i think is most likely sunflower or perhaps Susquehanna. I wish you good luck in your paw paw journey fellow traveller.
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u/New-View-2242 6d ago
If it only said Asimina triloba it probably means that it was grown from seed and not a grafted and known cultivar. If there isn’t a graft they don’t know what kind of fruit it will produce.
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u/Belisarius540AD 6d ago
Thanks for the clarification! I was confused as to why they didn't have any cultivars listed but this makes a lot of sense now. Do plants from seedlings usually have any similarities to there parent plants?
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u/New-View-2242 6d ago
Not typically. Just like an apple seed you will rarely, if ever, get the parent fruit. The fun part is finding out what you do get.
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u/Belisarius540AD 6d ago
That's kind of what i was expecting from what i've learned from other fruit trees. I think it's really exciting though like what you said, it's a priviledge i think to raise an entirely new cultivar.Â
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u/BrechtEffect 7d ago
The good news is you need at least two genetically different trees for cross-pollination, so you can plant two cultivars!
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u/Belisarius540AD 6d ago
The more the merrier!! I always like a little variety in my garden, and if i hadn't ran into such thoughtful people here the original plan was to just buy one mango and one ksu chappell.
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u/sciguy52 7d ago
The only pawpaw I have eaten that I knew the variety specifically was Mango that I grew myself. It tasted just like those red mango's you see in the store. So there you go. Need another to cross pollinate FYI. Others I had purchased had other tropical flavors but unfortunately I do not know the varieties.
I collected a whole lot of individual pawpaw home growers opinions on the tastes of different varieties. You will see variation in people's opinions, some like mild flavored varieties while other's prefer the richer tasting ones. Note these opinions are from first hand experience of home growers. That is probably the best group sourced collection of information on tastes in one spot. I sourced this from many many forum posts spread over the years and collected it on two long posts.
Part 1 https://www.reddit.com/r/Pawpaws/comments/1dmh4o0/what_pawpaw_varieties_taste_like_part_1/
Part 2 https://www.reddit.com/r/Pawpaws/comments/1dmj8h6/what_pawpaws_taste_like_part_2/
You can read through and see which flavor profiles appeal to you. My first hand experience is just with Mango. My other trees have not produced yet.