Putting in pawpaws

The pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) has so much of what I like in a plant. It is a good looking ornamental tree with big tropical leaves. Although something of an oddity, it is native to these parts and is host to the zebra swallowtail butterfly. You can grow it in part shade. And on top of all that, it makes an edible, creamy fruit.


photo Wikimedia


I think I have a perfect location for a row of pawpaw trees. Our garage apartment on the north and the neighbor’s on the south create an alley. It gets intermittent or dappled sun from miscellaneous trees and the neighbor’s garage. The soil is damp there longer than anywhere else in the garden. The soil was not as rich or well draining as needed, so steps were taken to fix that.

Ms Brenda, garden lady, dug the 8’ by 60’ wasteland along the back fence. All I asked was that the ground to be broken and weeds removed, but she likes to dig down as deep as the fork and to turn the soil over. All manner of corroded metal and concrete chunklets were removed. A plastic horse, aluminum fence post finials, and a buckle that may be silver turned up.

To build up the bed for the pawpaws, I mined some mounds of soil created during the garage construction project, and wheeled loads of it around to the new bed. In one area I found a Neapolitan confection of soil: a layer of bright white leftover mason’s sand, over the deep black of a former compost pile, on pale brown clay.


The builders had excavated some clay in clods up to the size of a basketball. That’s a representative chunk sitting on top of the load (photo below). Now those clods have been hacked to pieces and worked into the rest of the soil.



I didn’t do a soil test here, but I had some granular sulfur already and I tossed it over the piles. Our soil tends to be alkaline and pawpaws prefer more acidic soil. Some Microlife, an organic fertilizer, was also tossed on. The last amendment added was the ashes of sweet dog Thorn (Read about her here). The pale yellow of the sulfur and the blue-white of her ashes made a strange visual.

When the bed was leveled out, it had a nice crown in the center. Digging holes for the 7-gallon container sized rootballs was as easy as playing in sandbox, thanks to Brenda. The soil is so well prepared back there, it feels like brown sugar on the shovel.




The trees are 10’ on center. They don’t have much presence in this photo, being leafless. The vines being trained to the fence are Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens), also native.

Pawpaws must cross pollinate, so I picked several varieties of trees. For a fruit no one ever seems to have tasted, there are a lot of varieties available. Several of mine are an ungrafted ‘native’ variety. They are younger, yet taller, than the two grafted varieties I chose. The grafted “Wells’ matures later than ‘Rebecca’s Gold’ but both have large fruit. (Memo to self: Wells is on southeast side and Rebecca is on southwest) In the nursery, they expected the trees to be temperamental producers throughout their youth. We’ll see. The pawpaws that grow wild on a piece of land we own in Nacogdoches are very small but fruitful, like this one below. There is a small green pawpaw about mid-photo:


The small fig-brown flowers of the pawpaw are pollinated by flies. I recall that the speaker on fruit trees at the Master Gardener class said his trees’ productivity increased when he brought home some roadkill! I'm hoping funky old sandwich meat hung on the fence will work, instead.

Praise for a giant swamp thing

Rudbeckia maxima, aka swamp coneflower and giant coneflower, grows in roadside ditches all over East Texas. Here they are in late May, surging forth gloriously along a country road south of Tyler. If I was standing out there in the photo with them, you’d see the bloom stalks over my head—they are about 6’ tall (but I am not).

As spectacular as the blooms are, my favorite part of the plant is the leaves. Here is the rosette of a swamp coneflower in the garden today. The big leaves are blue green and they will stay this lush and cabbage-colored through the winter. This is different from other Rudbeckias which go dormant as miniscule and miserable-looking rosettes during winter.

Swamp coneflowers do have a period of looking seedy in the late summer when they are all about the stalky old flowerheads. I want to attract finches so I tolerate the gangly seedheads. Post Hurricane Ike, I cut them back and new growth sprang up soon after. Sorry finches, wherever you are.

Though it grows in low wet spots in the wild, swamp coneflower will do just fine in regular garden soil. My five are in an un-irrigated, slightly built-up planting bed. Louisiana iris, switch grass, and native crinum lilies are also dual citizens of the swamp and flower bed. If I had a big raingarden in a sunny spot, I would happily add them together with more swamp coneflowers.

Crinums with Provenance

Here’s a Crinum americanum/spider lily photographed fresh this morning. I acquired the original plants on a lunch break in a park. They were being dug up and dumped because the neighborhood wanted something more tidy and spectacular. It’s not a front-of-the-bed plant but it has some great qualities and is native here. The blooms smell like lemons and magnolia. It’s happy in shade or sun. You can’t kill it in standing water or dried out clay—it’s perfect for rain gardens.
From my garden they have now gone to various plant sales, Native Plant Society swaps, and even a bayou restoration project. That’s an honorable career for a plant once headed to the trashbag.



This Deep Sea Lily came from a 19th century place in the Old Sixth Ward which belonged to my friend Ms Alex. It has six-foot long floppy foliage which gets tangled up in an undersea way. It is probably Crinum x herbertii, an old hybrid with African ancestors. For some reason, Ms Alex and I decided to divide her clump of lilies. Chipping away the clay, I got an education on what a monster bulb this thing has. Eighteen inches down I was still trying to dig under the bulbs but splitting them midway. The ones that I got out intact looked just like leeks on a grand scale.
I replanted them at home without much forethought, and now they are completely shaded, which means they should be relocated somewhere sunny. I think about all the excavation required and I can’t get excited about it. The flowers on my variety are so-so compared to other “Milk and Wine” types, and the scapes fall over the instant the buds open. But it has great bluish green foliage and I do love a blue-green plant.

There was a sad one-leafed lily growing right up by the dark foundation of our neighborhood abandoned house. I wanted to rescue it and put it in my bed for wayward amaryllises, because that’s what I assumed it was. I took a hand spade, a bag, and the dog (for cover) down to the house one evening and I lifted that little bulb. Five fingered gardening, I think it’s called. Stealing. The plant is quite robust now, but didn’t bloom with the amaryllises this spring.

In June, I lucked into a ticket to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, with Ms Kelli and family. On rambles I saw Hymenocallis spider lilies in beautiful clumps along the undeveloped beaches. Here's one blooming by a beach hut at our resort, Iberostar Quetzal.

When I got home, my hot ‘amaryllis’ was blooming—and it’s a Hymenocallis. I didn’t get a picture. I wasn’t garden blogging then. Now I’ve found out there are a zillion varieties of US and Mexican Hymenocallis, according to Scott Ogden’s book Garden Bulbs for the South. Guess I have to wait till next year when it blooms if I want to know what kind it is.

I have to say I like my passalong crinums with a little shady history more than the blank slate plants I get from a nursery.

Plants to Plant: Texas Wild Olive/Cordia boissieri

Texas Wild Olive is pretty drought tolerant but you wouldn’t know think it by looking at those lush leaves. This little tree is a fast grower and wants to be as wide as it is tall, about 15'. I prune mine up to reveal more of the multi-trunks. The pruning of the branches is tricky since it tends to fork with three stems at the same point.

Wildlife...
This tree is not indigenous to Houston—it hails from South Texas some 600 miles away. But when I plant something from further down the migration pathway, I like to think that some critter gets to enjoy the last Texas Wild Olive on the way to Canada.

I have heard that to attract hummingbirds, one should plant flowers in order of their preference from red (the highest) through oranges and yellows to White (the least preferred). But get this: I see hummingbirds getting into the Texas Wild Olive flowers before the sun comes up. At that time, white is the only color that stands out. I have also seen a sphinx moth visiting the tree at the same time as a hummingbird, and you can’t really get them mixed up.
Black swallowtails are the butterfly that seems to like Texas Wild Olive best.

There is a green olive-sized fruit that never seems to get eaten. Certainly not by me, as I’ve heard it’s inedible. I am a big fan of weird fruit, but maybe in this case ‘inedible’ is a nice way of saying poisonous.

Hardly any cons...
I only want to criticize this tree when it molts in March while everything else is springing forth with fresh vitality. The Texas Wild Olive just stands there with spotty brown and yellow leaves and looks like crap.
Also, Texas Wild Olive has scentless flowers which are just a missed opportunity. The white flowers of the world have a monopoly on the best floral odors: magnolias, butterfly ginger, crinums, natal plum, gardenias, jasmine…



One last thing: I planted my Texas Wild Olive to commemorate a wedding. Ms Alex, this is what has become of the nursery gift certificate you gave me for hosting your shower!