Can you spot the pollinator on these pawpaw flowers?

🪰 That’s right: it’s a fly! Common pawpaws (Asimina triloba) flowers have a pungent, yeasty smell and look a little like rotting meat, qualities that help them attract their main pollinators: flies and beetles. You’d hardly guess these stinky flowers turn into tropical-tasting fruits in autumn! Unfortunately for pawpaws, flies and beetles tend to be less efficient than bees at pollination: they don’t have the special pollen-carrying hairs many bees have, and they usually visit flowers to feed themselves, rather than making many trips to and from a nest to feed their larvae, as bees do. (Fewer flower visits mean fewer opportunities for pollination!) Pawpaws can also have a hard time setting fruit because they require cross-pollination: pollen needs to move between two genetically distinct individuals to be successful. To make for more fruits, backyard growers and pawpaw farmers have tried a number of techniques, from hand pollination to hanging roadkill around the trees! Have you heard of (or tried) any other odd pawpaw pollination tricks? 👀 #pawpaw #pollinators #spring