From green to purple

The flowers pictured here are from the native paw paw tree. I found dozens of paw paw trees sporting hundreds of blooms in a Scott County woodlot April 12. This image shows two blossoms on the same limb. The green one is beginning to burst open and will turn purple like the other one that is a few days older.

Gnats, wasps, flies and bees are pollinators that visit paw paw flowers. Paw paw trees are not self-pollinating, and a small grove of these trees most likely all share a common root system. This means that in order to successfully pollinate a flower, the pollinator must visit another paw paw tree some distance away. Because of this, a patch of paw paws can have hundreds of beautiful flowers in April and produce only a small crop of banana-like fruits in September and October.

The ripe fruit of the paw paw tree is safe for humans to eat. In 2019, the Missouri State Legislature designated the fruit of the paw paw as the Missouri State Fruit.