alt Hacker NewsPawpaws are actually hermaphroditic not dioecious. Your tree produces female flowers first and later in the year produces male flowers. This is to prevent self-pollination. However, you can save some male pollen until next year.
Alternatively, you could graft the branch of a pawpaw that flowers earlier to try and get the male and female flowers maturing at the same time. You might also be able to just buy some pollen. It's actually quite easy to collect. You can use a brush to sprinkle it on a female flower
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> Your tree produces female flowers first and later in the year produces male flowers. This is to prevent self-pollination
How does this work in practice? Do other trees from the same species produce male flowers first, and then female? Logically, if all trees produce female flowers in spring and male flowers in the summer then the species can only survive if the seeds can remain viable unfertilized for months (which is probably not that exceptional for plants, I wouldn't know). But if the female seeds are still viable by the time the plant sprouts its male flowers, exactly how does this prevent self-pollination?
Wait would that work? My understanding was that the pollen had to come from a different genome of pawpaw for it to work... But perhaps I'm mistaken?