← pawpaw
rights unknown
Sunflower
Wild selection
The record
- Parentage
- Wild selection
- Origin
- Milo Gibson · Near Chanute, Kansas · found 1970
- Rights
- rights unknown — No patent, certificate, or trademark found in the sources consulted.
- Fruit
- Exceptionally large
- Harvest
- Very late, extending the season past most other cultivars
- Pollination
- Widely listed by nurseries as self-fertile — treat that claim with caution and plant a second cultivar anyway
Description
A wild tree found near Chanute, Kansas in 1970, valued for large fruit and for ripening very late, after most of the season is over.
It carries the one claim in this file worth arguing with. Nurseries routinely list ‘Sunflower’ as among the few self-fertile pawpaws, and the same listings add that yields improve with a pollen partner nearby. The species is self-incompatible and its flowers are protogynous, so a grower planting a single tree on the strength of that claim is taking a real risk for no gain. Plant two.