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The South Marysburgh Mirror D590 ONES BAYS Ores BAY ET old style Paw Pause A three-legged dog walks into a western saloon. The bar- tender asks ‘hey partner, what brings a fella like you to these parts?’ The three-legged dog replies ‘I’m here to find the man who shot my paw’! Speaking of paws—-l’m excited that this year, seven years after planting our first paw paw shrub. that | see the first signs of fruit. What are those you might ask? Well, the paw paw is North America’s largest native fruit. It’s a stretch to include Canada in this claim as naturally they are only found in our most southerly Carolinian Forests around Windsor and Point Pelee. They will grow (reluctantly ) near the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. We have four healthy shrubs while on Morrison Point, Vicki of Vicki’s Veggies has several older trees. The paw paw (Asinima triloba) is a member of a worldwide tropical family known as Custard Apples. They taste and look like a small mango/banana with flavour hints of mango, pine- apple and vanilla. They won’t fruit unless cross-pollinated by another nearby shrub. Last year our largest one had its first flowers. This year a second one flowered and it looks like small fruits are forming ( a paw paw de deux). The flowers are dark red (the colour of raw meat) and they smell a bit like that, too. This is understandable as they are pollinated by the type of carrion fly that is attracted to dead flesh—this isn’t a marketing promo!. As their pollination strategy is often | it’s wise to r the natural process by using a fine paint brush to transfer pollen between the flowers of each plant. Often, the first time any tree bears fruit it doesn’t reach maturity but ...fingers crossed. I’ve wanted to grow paw paws for a decade and was having trouble finding plants to purchase. Once, while driving around the bottom of Lake Michigan near Chicago, | noticed an exit for Paw Paw Michigan. The small town had two com- mercial, retail greenhouses so | went to them looking to buy seedings. Neither had any but one owner remarked that maybe they should try that... maybe they’re rich today and | will get a residual for the suggestion. Recently, I’ve found paw paws in several nursery catalogues. Some offer large and sweet cross-bred cultivars but these are usually more frost sensitive so I’d stick with trying natural seedlings here on the edge of their range. The plant has a large underground root systems which will send up suckers around the shrub base which look like easy transplants but their deep root shoots rarely survive the cut so growing them from seed is a better option. They naturally grow under much larger trees and might grow best in partial shade. June 2023 /15 Indigenous people harvested them for both food and medi- cine. Tribes in the Mississippi Valley introduced them to de- lighted European explorers in 1540. They were later de- scribed as George Washington’s favourite dessert. | first heard of them as a child in Burl Ives’ children’s song....”way down yonder in the paw paw patch...’ although it was probably an- other forty years before | learned that it was a fruit. They aren’t commercially popular because they quickly go soft and rot once picked and they bruise easily, so the soft, sweet flesh is best scooped out fresh off the branch. If reading all of this has left you with an irresistible desire to try one of the many paw paw varieties you could search out one of the many Paw Paw Festivals in the USA —Ohio having the oldest and largest. Harkening back to that opening joke......do you suppose that if that three-legged dog received an artificial limb it might be considered a ‘faux-paw’? - By Robin Reilly At their Black River Forest Garden, the Reilly’s raise many types of plants and ani- mals within a larger project to restore a diverse meadow and forest landscape.