Good stuff. Getting them before the animals do can be an issue. Pick them too early, they can fail to ripen properly. Wait too long and they're gone.
Leaves smell like green peppers (or mangoes as you southern IN people call them), which apparently animals and insects do not like. Leaves are rarely eaten by anything.
I haven't had one in years. I miss eating persimmon pudding too!
If you want your pawpaw trees to produce more fruit, place dead animals underneath the trees in the spring. The flowers of the pawpaw are pollinated by flies, instead of bees. Apparently the flowers of the pawpaw smell like carrion, and the flies attracted to the dead animals will pollinate the flowers. It DOES work (road kill works great)
They make excellent wine, but as has been said earlier staying ahead of the forest critters is tough.
Never even heard of paw paws? What do they taste like? If it’s chicken **** it, I hate chicken.
I grew up with about 4 trees on our property. I think in 15 years I ate ONE. They were that hard. When I was in my teens they all developed some kind of blight and either died and rotted, or just stopped producing fruit.
And if you look at the official notes online (wikis, etc) they say they "go as far west as Ohio". Uh.... About that guys...