Pawpaw Ecological Survey in Michigan
Part 3: Wild-Planting Experiments

Most recent UPDATE: September 2025 by Connie Barlow
[email protected]

ASIMEN is the traditional Potawatomi term Henceforth, "PAWPAW" and "ASIMEN" will be used interchangeably in this project. Consult the Asimina triloba entry in Wikipedia. Linked Table of Topics (on this webpage) PART 3: WILD-PLANTING EXPERIMENTS • BASELINE DOCUMENTATION of a Wild Patch (Saline River, Michigan, 2020 & 2021) • Learning about Germination (2023) • Helping Forests Walk: Assisted Migration of Pawpaw • Helping Forests Walk 2025 wild-planting success along HURON RIVER, Michigan! • BACKGROUND STORY • LEARNINGS   • LIST OF PATCHES with links • Portal • Old End Trail Patch • Old River Patch • Patch 1 • Patch 1.5 • Patch 2 • Patch 3A • Patch 3B • Patch 3C • Patch 4A • Patch 4B • Patch 4C • Patch 4.5 • Patch 5A • Patch 5B • Patch 5C • Patch 5D • Patch 5E • Patch 6 • Patch 7 • Patch 8A • Patch 8B • Patch 8C • Patch 8D • Patch 8E • Patch 8F • Patch 9A • Patch 9B • Upland Trail Begins • By Fence • Upland Bedframe • Planting Thornapple River Slope (2022) Companion Pawpaw Webpages PART 1: Who Are the Pollinators? • Conclusions & Recommendations for Attracting Pollinators • Video Documentation of Pawpaw Pollinator Fieldwork • Collecting and Distributing Seeds • Other Anatomical Features of Pawpaw • Basic Elements of the Pollinator Study • Sites (Fruited and Fruitless) for Field Observations and Comparisons • STUDY AIMS with Three Alternative Hypotheses re POLLINATION • Pawpaw as an ancient flower type (CRUCIAL READING FOR SERIOUS OBSERVERS) • Pawpaw Flower Stages • Food for Pollinators • Pawpaw Pollination: Knowns and Unknowns • Probable Pollinators of Spring 2021 - Nitulidid Beetles • APPENDIX: PHOTOS of Spring 2021 surveillance at sites (insects, pawpaw stages, ecology) • South African Cycad Paper Distinguishes Casual Visitors from Effective Pollinators • Ecological Interpretations of 2021 Field Experience • BACKGROUND PAPERS for Ascertaining Ecological Interpretations • RECOMMENDATIONS for ORCHARD HABITAT MANAGEMENT • FURTHER QUESTIONS and SUGGESTIONS FOR EXPERIMENTS • Guidance for the Future Pollinator Watches • Additional POLLINATOR Information from Technical Papers PART 2: RESTORING RECIPROCITY • Appreciating Asimen: Geography and Taxonomic Relatives • Appreciating Asimen: Fully resists deer browsing • Appreciating Asimen: Prevents Invasion by Japanese Stiltgrass • Appreciating Asimen: Ethnobotany • Toward Renewing and Expanding Reciprocity • Could pawpaw help compensate for the loss of Black Ash as a fiber source? • Could pawpaw restore the subcanopy where deer are overpopulated? • Appreciating Asimen: Original Instructions • New York State: Where Pawpaw is a "Threatened Species" • What About American Persimmon? Part 3 WILD PLANTING EXPERIMENTS BASELINE DOCUMENTATION Pawpaw Patch along the Saline River of southern Michigan PURPOSE: Photos and text of the SALINE RIVER wild patch are intended for learning pawpaw habitat preferences. Later sections of this page will explore possibilities for wild planting in locations where pawpaw could thrive but are missing. ABOVE: Pawpaw has a taproot, so it cannot grow in the lowest flood zone of a river. Connie Barlow is touching stems of the portion of the pawpaw patch closest to the Saline River, which is growing on the first rise. (December 2020) ABOVE: A bit downstream from the previous photo, these two pawpaw stems are on the first rise barely above this very high flood stage. All green leaves in the foreground are pawpaw leaves. Pawpaw stems can grow very close together because, technically, they are the same individual tree. The photo below shows why. (September 2021) . ABOVE: Pawpaw "patches" are formed primarily from vegetative stems (not roots) that grow horizontally just below the surface, and then send up a new vertical stem some small or moderate distance away. Apparently, the horizontal stems cannot grow through even small depressions that periodically flood. (December 2020) ABOVE and BELOW: The vertical stems themselves live for no more than about 50 or 60 years — and usually lean quite a bit out of the vertical. Even so, the patch as a whole can be centuries old (May 2021). ABOVE and BELOW: Pawpaw annually regrows its large leaves, such that spring ephemerals find excellent and long-lasting habitat. (May 2021) ABOVE: By the beginning of autumn, when the fruits begin to ripen, late-season ephemerals, such as nettles, have taken the place of the spring ephemerals. (24 September 2021) ABOVE: Because this family of plants (Annonaceae) evolved many of its species long ago, pawpaw forged a relationship primarily with mammals large enough to swallow the big seeds whole along with the pulp. Passage through the animal's digestive system was not only a great way to achieve potentially long-distance seed dispersal, but a lump of fertilizer was an additional gift wherever the seeds were deposited. For the past 10,000 years bears and humans have become the primary seed dispersers.     In order to ensure safe passage through an animal, the seeds must fully mature and harden before the pulp does. Even if an unripe fruit falls early, animals tend to leave it alone: the skin and pulp remain unpalatable until fully ripe. Even insects avoid unripe fruit. As well, the seeds are and remain exceedingly poisonous to all mammals — thus ensuring that rodents will not disturb them.     Poisonous seeds and thin, fragile skin easily bruised, as well as brown signifying a well-ripened fruit, means that this fruit still hasn't been turned into a commercial food. People do plant pawpaw orchards, but more for their own consumption and as a U-pick seasonal endeavor. (24 September 2021) ABOVE: Experiencing an old-growth pawpaw patch (an ongoing mixture of old and new stems) is like nothing else in this region. Annonaceae is a huge family of tropical and subtropical plants, often with very large fruits (e.g., Cherimoya). No other species in that family extends as far poleward beyond the tropics as does Asimen on Turtle Island. ABOVE: Connie Barlow filmed and posted a 36-minute video that shows this patch (in great detail) along the Saline River primarily during the fruiting season.     VIDEO: Helping Forests Walk 04 B - Is this an Old Growth Pawpaw Patch? (Michigan, 2021) Learning about Germination ABOVE: Connie's husband, MICHAEL DOWD, assisted with digging winter stratification pits in November 2021 and 2022 in the same area along the Huron River (Ypsilanti) where germinated seeds would be planted in later years. This photo was taken in 2022, as he pours seeds collected at Marc Boone's orchard into a winter stratification pit. (Eleven months later, he died suddenly — two days after attending his father's hospice death in upstate New York.) IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES: In late May 2023, after digging up the 2022 seeds from winter stratification, Connie put some in the refrigerator and removed them at monthly intervals to watch for germination success and timing. Overall, I learned: • Germination can be delayed by refrigeration, without reducing germination success. • Seeds put into room temperature soil conditions will begin to germinate in about 7 days at the earliest. All viable seeds will have germinated within just 4 weeks. I kept some ungerminated seeds continuing in the kitchen for the whole summer, and just 1 germinated after 2 months.   ABOVE LEFT: Rarely, a seed that did not germinate felt squeezable. I opened one and found worms of some type inside. ABOVE RIGHT: I laid the seeds horizontally on top of soil in several containers in the kitchen, covered them with paper towel, and kept the top moist. This way I could see germination without having to dig. And that is why in this photo the roots all orient in the same way. __________    Summer of 2023, I decided to germinate some pawpaw seeds indoors (left). Four germinated seeds I planted into a bucket (below), so that later I could see how their roots developed, before planting them out on family property to perhaps become an orchard.   LEARNINGS - TIMING OF GERMINATION: Keeping pawpaw seeds in the refrigerator prevents germination. Results of 2023 and 2024 for many seeds: After I put seeds into germinating situations at room temperature, it took 3 weeks for the first germination to occur. By the end of another 3 weeks, any seeds that will germinate that season have already finished. In 2024 I tested the non-germinated seeds from the 2022 harvest (thus after 2 winter stratifications in outdoor soil). Again, it has taken 3 weeks out of the fridge for the first to begin germinating. LEARNINGS - TIMING BEFORE ANY ABOVE-GROUND APPEARANCE: The photo above right confirms that when the pot is deep enough (and the seed is buried deep enough, several inches), the seed is not pushed up out of the soil as the root grows. Although 4 seeds is not statistically significant, it may be helpful for others to know that all 4 germinated seeds took about the same amount of time simply growing root before anything appeared above ground: 1 MONTH. June 24 is when I planted the 4 germinated seeds into the white circular bucket shown above left. Above ground appearances were: July 26, July 31, Aug 4, Aug 7. I slit the bucket to safely remove all 4 plants, then put them in front of a taller bucket laid on the ground in order to show the rootstock well.   LEARNINGS - SPEED OF ROOT GROWTH INDOORS: Summer of 2025 I tested 15 seeds over the course of 10 days to document the speed of root growth — and if there were any differences between newly emerging, pointed roots and those with black square tips (signifying root loss during excavation of winter-stratification pits so late in the spring that some had already long germinated). PHOTO ABOVE LEFT: There are 3 columns, each with 5 seeds. Column 1 is short, pointy, newly germinated. Column 2 has white round spot visible where germination will happen. Column 3 seeds were injured during excavation, evidenced by black, square root tip. PHOTO ABOVE RIGHT: Each seed is in its same placement. Column 3 shows growth has resumed in different configurations and speed. Notice that the second from top seed regrew 2 roots from the damaged stub, while the stub itself elongated. Third from top also elongated, but the configuration of the tip hasn't changed. ---------- ABOVE LEFT: A 1998 paper reported no visible sign of germination above ground until Day 50, when "the first true leaves on the seedling emerged." Earlier reports of seedling emergence ranged from 45 to 90 days. "Morphological development of the North American pawpaw during germination and seedling emergence", by C.H. Finneseth et al., HortScience. ABOVE RIGHT: Connie Barlow experimented with planting pawpaw seeds 4 inches deep in a tall pot and thereby confirmed that a seedling will emerge without pushing the seed itself above the soil. Notice the REDDISH COLOR of the lower stem, and the "cup" that marks the transition to the real stem. __________    Sept 19, 2023: This end-of-first-year pawpaw seedling (center of photo) is difficult to discern from other ground-dwelling plants. The only way I was sure this was the pawpaw was to look closely at the stem: If the stem was dark reddish brown, smooth all the way up, and showed a "cup" (as in the photo above right), then I was sure it was pawpaw. At summer's end the smooth-edged leaves had gained a bulkiness that had a 3D look because the veins had deepened while the greenery had risen a bit into mounds. The rock lower left is the "marker" I placed after planting the germinated seed in order to be able to find the seedling. But I learned earlier that summer, if I place a marker rock too close to the planting site, herbivorous insects (pill bugs?) slowly ate down one of the newly emerged seedlings. CRUCIAL LEARNING IN 2024!!!! It is now evident that planted SEEDS can take up to 3 SUMMERS before appearing above ground, and GERMINATED PLANTED SEEDS will usually take 2 summers here in southern Michigan.      Lucas Machias found data online that suggests the answer: 75 degrees F. is required for germination, and thus root growth is likely also very slow in Michigan soil temperatures. My own observations confirm this: A large number of seedlings appeared Summer of 2023 from germinated seeds planted in the spring, while no new germinated seed plantings emerged above ground in 2024. Summer of 2023 had some long dry and hot spells throughout the early and mid summer, whereas Summer of 2024 had one hot spell early on but many instances of rain keeping the soil cool throughout. Connie was delighted in mid-summer 2025 to see newly emerged seedlings in locations where germinated seeds were planted in 2024, plus some new emergences from the 2023 germinated seed plantings. Sphagnum Moss Ideal for Germinating Seeds Connie uses sphagnum moss gathered from a huge cranberry bog (below) in northern Michigan. ABOVE: Connie Barlow, May 2011, in the cranberry bog of Barlow family property in northern Michigan. The paper birch at right are where her mother's ashes were placed in 1998. BELOW: Ripe cranberries at the top of a mossy hummock in the bog. • RETURN TO TOP  "Helping Forests Walk" Assisted Migration Experiments for Pawpaw As with many native trees, horticulturalists have inadvertently established ongoing experiments in learning just how far north pawpaw may be able to survive (even thrive well enough to perhaps produce fruit with viable seeds) in today's climate. Establishing pawpaw in suitable ecological habitats northward is a great way to ensure that this ancient and wondrous subcanopy tree will indeed pass through the bottleneck of unnaturally rapid, human-caused climate change. Locales of such horticultural plantings will be added to this page, whenever the editor is alerted to their existence (especially along with photos) — such as the two below.   ABOVE: Oct 2022 - Pawpaw planted near Hayward, Wisconsin (Oct 2022). LEFT: Pawpaw planted in southern Quebec, Canada (Oct 2022). BELOW: Connie Barlow winter-stratified seeds from fruit harvested Fall 2022 in a pit dug into a well-drained forested slope near her home in southern Michigan. The last week in May 2023 the seeds were dug up, boxed, and mailed 5 days later. After 2 weeks, the boxes arrived at the homes of two planters in Canada: Ottawa (left) and Nova Scotia (right). Some seeds had germinated enroute. ABOVE: It took 2 weeks for seeds sent priority mail from southern Michigan to reach 2 destinations in eastern Canada. During that time, 28 of 59 seeds germinated enroute to Ottawa, Ontario (left), and 14 of 60 germinated enroute to Nova Scotia (right). • RETURN TO TOP "Helping Forests Walk 2025" Learning from critters and planting thousands of seeds Huron River, Ypsilanti MICHIGAN (by Connie Barlow) Numerous photos below will show the ongoing results of within-forest pawpaw plantings that began in November 2021 and massively upscaled summer of 2025. BACKGROUND STORY: • 2021: Connie Barlow obtained seeds from a dozen fruits she purchased in October at Marc Boone's pawpaw orchard near Ann Arbor, Michigan. She initiated her own experimental within-forest plantings in November. • 2022 and 2023: Marc Boone donated rotting and hard green fruits to Connie post-harvest. Seeds she extracted were distributed almost entirely NORTHWARD of pawpaw's "historical range" — in the spirit of "helping forests walk" (technically known in science as "assisted migration"). Recipients included citizens in eastern Canada and tribes in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and New York. • 2024: In November, Connie picked up 2 buckets of post-processing pawpaw remains from Joe Grant's orchard in Midland MI. The seed count numbered over 3,000. • 2025: June through September, Connie did massive experimental plantings (of various densities and configurations) in the post-industrial bottomland along the Huron River near her home. TOTAL NEW PLANTINGS SUMMER 2025: 1,312 germinated seeds + 30 seedlings OLDER SEEDLINGS DOCUMENTED 2025: 41 (minus 3 eaten or broken off later) LEARNING FROM CRITTERS: Even though pawpaw is poisonous, the local critters have not experienced this plant before. In the first two years, it was disappointing that the tops of newly emerged seedlings often were cut off — and a few laid uneaten alongside. Fortunately, the planting in October 2022 included one plot where 36 seeds were densely planted. Summer of 2024 was when about a dozen seedlings first appeared there, but the most exposed had severe herbivory. In 2025 a total of 14 were observed again, and this time with almost no herbivory ensuing all summer. Thus the crucial early learning was to PLANT SEEDS DENSELY.   STORY: Connie says,     "A year after I started planting pawpaw seeds in the Huron River bottomlands and on its steep slope, I discovered "Barlow" graves in the cemetery adjacent to my planting area. Because my paternal lineage in America is easy to track, I calculate that our closest common ancestor was 9 generations ago in Massachusetts." Connie's husband, Michael Dowd, took this photo April 2023. He died 6 months later. The cemetery is just a half-mile walk for her. But the scale of the plantings in 2025 (preceded by energetic "privet-pulling" and other weeding), coupled with extraordinary summer heat, meant she needed help from a neighbor. Betty Keefe came to her rescue, driving Connie to and fro. NOTE: This is the second cemetery of Barlow graves in southern Michigan where Connie has introduced the native pawpaw to the adjacent river slope. See 2022 photos of the Thornapple River Planting Site, with Connie standing beside the Barlow section grave marker. Learnings 1. WINTER STRATIFY AND GERMINATE SEEDS. Seeds will not germinate until they have passed through their first winter (and a significant number require a second winter). You can always plant them into their destination right after harvest. If you live in a northern state, do not plant seeds shallow in the fall (in case of a below-zero spell with no snow insulation). Connie Barlow used to plant seeds directly in the fall, but now she puts them all in one or more forest pits for stratification. Because pawpaw seeds require at least 75F degrees to stimulate germination, bring them into your kitchen the following spring before planting. (Connie uses sphagnum moss as an anti-mold, moist matrix in containers in her kitchen, where it is easy to periodically remove the germinated seeds for planting). 2. CHOOSE FORESTED SITES WITH SOME SUNLIGHT. Pawpaw is famously adept at beginning life in very shady locations (thanks to its large seed). It is, after all, a subcanopy woody plant. For your plantings to grow vigorously, however, you will need to offer them places that secure some hours of direct or dappled sunlight during the summer. (Connie now chooses forested locations based on good "indicator" plants: tall annuals and/or non-native woody privet, which occur wherever there are recent treefalls.) Weed those patches and get your pawpaws heading upward before the other woody competitors begin to create a new canopy. DO NOT PLANT IN ANY SITE THAT LOOKS LIKE THE PHOTO BELOW, taken by Connie Barlow at her Huron River planting site.   Amur honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii (LEFT), is native to east Asia. It has a remarkable capacity as a subcanopy woody plant to shade out all native tree seedlings and almost all herbs such that it becomes the canopy. Its leaves emerge so early that spring flowers don't have a chance. Even the subcanopy evergreens are stressed because this Asian honeysuckle maintains full, green leaf even into December in Michigan. If you can get some pawpaw established nearby, they will send out rhizomes as long as 10 or 20 feet. The existing tall stems then will send photosynthates to the new upward growth. That would be an ideal time for a human with a saw to cut back overarching Lonicera stems. 3. PLANT DENSELY, so that every herbivorous mammal can sample this unfamiliar plant suddenly showing up in its territory, without killing them all. Connie initially planted only in weeded patches, but in later experiments she only pulled a few weeds before planting a single seed — and then moved a few feet before weeding and planting another. This kind of single-seed plantings en masse has one big drawback. It will be difficult to check for early growth, without risking stepping on the young pawpaws. In contrast, the fully weeded patches are easy to observe on return trips, so she resumed planting mostly in that style. 4. REVISIT ALL WEEDED PATCHES WITHIN A FEW DAYS. About a third of all the 2025 seed plantings in weeded patches showed evidence of rodent excavations within a day or two. Seeds are poisonous, so the seeds are simply brought to the surface with root usually intact. Crucially, if you see a vole hole while weeding, stop! Create a patch elsewhere. And even if you see no vole holes, return within a few days to your weeded and planted patch to rescue (and replant) the excavated seeds. Note: Three patches weeded and planted in 2025 showed the worst rodent activity: Patch 1, Patch 8F, Patch 8H. (Deep burial reduces rodent upsets, but delays a seedling showing above ground.) The good news is this: If local rodents excavate some of the seeds, they do so only once. So you can find and replant the excavated seeds, and the rodents will thenceforth leave them alone. 5. SOME SEEDLINGS WILL NOT BE VISIBLE UNTIL THE 2ND OR 3RD SUMMER AFTER PLANTING. Cold soil in the northern states will extend germination and root growth time. And some seedlings will experience stem herbivory (that knocks off all leaves) before you can spot the plant. (See 2025 examples of this at Old River Patch and Patch 7.) Yes, pawpaw seeds, roots, stems, and leaves are poisonous, but if your local fauna are unfamiliar with this plant, curiosity may lead them to do a taste test. Fortunately, there seems to be some capacity for a well-rooted pawpaw seedling to restore above-ground growth at least once after moderate or even severe (low stem) herbivory. 6. PLANT AT A DEAD END OR IN SHORT PRIVET AREAS AWAY FROM DEER TRAILS. Although Connie has planted seeds in several places along the dominant unofficial human trail, it is likely best to plant in places where deer do not regularly walk. Also recommended are where fallen trees or branches construct a barrier that deer won't walk through or jump over. Do be careful, however, that your weeded patches do not attract deer to use them as a way to begin a new trail. 7. PLANTING DEPTH DEPENDS ON SEED NUMBERS & TIMING. If you have lots of seeds that you are planting densely, then plant GERMINATED SEEDS only an inch or so deep in spring or summer. If you have few seeds, then you must plant deep (3 to 4 inches) to avoid curious rodents from bringing many of them to the surface. Deep plantings, however, will take longer to emerge as seedlings. 8. PLACING A ROCK CLOSE TO A SEEDLING MAY INDUCE DEER TO STEP BEYOND THE PLANT. Taking a phrase from Aldo Leopold, Connie Barlow is motivated to begin "thinking like a deer" in her effort to RESTORE RECIPROCITY in the human relationship with pawpaw along the HURON RIVER. 9. BEWARE OF UNDERGROUND WASP NESTS. Beds of weedy annuals do not seem to harbor wasp nests. But nearby logs and dense privet patches several feet tall may attract wasps. So carefully walk through or use a stick to disturb an area before you bend down and begin intensive weeding. Connie got stung twice by yellow-jackets while focused on weeding a thick privet patch 2 feet tall. Unlike bees, a wasp can sting repeatedly. Phermones emitted will attract more. • RETURN TO TOP Titles (with links) to each of the forest plantings along Huron River BOTTOMLAND PLANTINGS:    • Portal • Old End Trail Patch • Old River Patch • Patch 1 • Patch 1.5 • Patch 2 • Patch 3A • Patch 3B • Patch 3C • Patch 4A • Patch 4B • Patch 4C • Patch 4.5 • Patch 5A • Patch 5B • Patch 5C • Patch 5D • Patch 5E • Patch 6 • Patch 7 • Patch 8A • Patch 8B • Patch 8C • Patch 8D • Patch 8E • Patch 8F • Patch 8G • Patch 8H • Patch 9A • Patch 9B UPLAND PLANTINGS:    • Upland Trail Begins • By Fence • Bedframe • Steep Trail Down ABOVE: The best location for sensing the directionality of all planted patches is the SPIRAL TREE. This is a living Amur Honeysuckle that marks where the main human trail from the upland takes a sharp turn left, just before entering the dense low growth of the river's edge. This is also the shadiest part of the trail, owing to the old-growth honeysuckle. Lonicera maackii forms a low canopy beneath the few native canopy species that persist (following massive deaths of ash trees and ongoing marginal deaths of elms). The photos above were taken in AUGUST 2025 — and you can see that almost no ground plants can tolerate this much shade. • RETURN TO TOP "Portal" (entering the bottomland) (set of 5 seedlings grown in one pot September 2, 2025) ABOVE LEFT: The tallest of the 5 companion seedlings catches some sun, immediately after planting. ABOVE RIGHT: The Portal group was planted at the first good site where the Upland Trail ends and the two Bottomland trails begin. A number of non-native privets were pulled to open one small spot. Surrounding plants remain as a defense against deer trampling, and the privet grows much taller immediately to the left. So deer will always take the human trail when at this triple-trail juncture, as shown in this image. • RETURN TO TOP "Old End-Trail Patch" (first experiment in dense planting) ABOVE: November 2022, a total of 36 non-germinated seeds (harvested the previous month) were planted densely by Connie Barlow at this site. Two patches of 12 seeds each, marked by rocks, are visible in the photo. A third patch of 12 is next to where the photographer (Connie) is standing. Glass bottles were easy to find in this post-industrial forest, some of great age. These she used to also mark the patches initially, though they vanished in future years. By mid-summer 2024 and again in 2025, 14 pawpaw seedlings were visible in that patch. This exceeds the multi-year success of any of the less-dense seed plantings she had made in 2022 and 2023. Likely, the success of dense planting was that it offered each local herbivore (mainly, deer and rabbits) a chance to sample this "unknown" plant in their territory. Henceforth they might recognize the smell, taste, and form as undesirable (technically, toxic), and just leave it alone. Thus, by the summer of 2025 Connie had learned to plant pawpaw seeds only in dense patches. (She expects to keep learning from the local herbivores as plantings continue.) PHOTOS BELOW ARE MID-JULY 2025. PHOTOS ABOVE in mid July 2025, at the single dense planting of 2022. UPDATE for the "Old End-Trail Patch on September 5, 2025: A total of 17 seedlings were visible, with 3 previously undocumented in the left-most locale. One of those newly documented has very small new leaves, as if it were emerging for the first time — yet all arise from seedlings planted late Fall 2022. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "Old River Patch" (closest to the river) Above photos mid-July 2025 ABOVE LEFT is in its third summer, following substantial herbivory that killed its two nearest neighbors. Mid-July, Connie supplemented this site by planting 3 ungerminated seeds about 2 feet to the left. ABOVE RIGHT was one of 6 germinated seeds planted as extensions of the Old River Patch in July 2024. This is its first summer above ground. It is about 8 feet closer to the river than its older seedling. Will it survive herbivory? And when in 2025 will herbivory begin? Connie planted another 16 ungerminated seeds densely, beginning about 2 feet to its right. ABOVE & BELOW: 1 August 2025, 2 more of the germinated seeds that had been planted in 2024 as an expansion of the Old River Patch were seen above ground for the first time. It is common for pawpaw seeds, even those already germinated when planted, to not appear as seedlings in southern Michigan their first summer. (Look for the rocks near the seedlings in the distant photos. The rocks are at the lower right corner for ABOVE and the lower center for BELOW.) ABOVE and BELOW: Another 2 seedlings from previous-year plantings were seen for the first time at the "Old River Patch" in early August 2025. Remarkably, their positions indicate that they were from the original 2023 planting — but were not seen in the previous two summers. The yellow circle marks the already known seedling featured at the beginning of this section. The white circle seedling looks like it is newly emerged this year. The blue circle seedling's lower stem shows signs of full-plant herbivory (in contrast to this year's delicate leaf herbivory), so it probably emerged in 2024. ABOVE: Left is white-circle seedling and right is blue-circle seedling of the "Old River Patch", newly discovered early August 2025. BELOW: NEWSFLASH August 14, 2025: A seedling vanishes! The rock certifies the loss. Connie ran her hand along the vacant area and found no evidence that a lower stem remains. The poisonous plant itself had not been discarded anywhere in sight. Will such seedlings cease vanishing once the many remaining pawpaws grow tall enough for deer to sample mere leaves? Or might the culprit have been a woodchuck doing some territorial housecleaning? An active burrow big enough for a woodchuck is 20 feet away.   • LEARNING: In this kind of wild-planting, where seeds instead of seedlings are planted, one can never be sure that a seed failed to produce a seedling. A previous photo-entry in this section noted that Connie observed this seedling for the first time on August 1. By August 14 it was gone. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 1" (close to 'OLD END TRAIL' PATCH) 100 germinated seeds planted June 28, 2025 ABOVE: 100 germinated seeds planted 28 June 2025; half covered with leaves. Owing to moist soil, it was easy to pull all the dense weeds, including young privet. Connie chose it because one part had annuals 3 to 4 feet high. Beneath the dense weeds and privet were long, low-lying grasses. So this is a relatively new opening, beginning with grass that is now being shaded out. Grass was super easy to pull.     Next day watering: Lots of rodent activity with 43 seeds now visible and so I reburied each deep. (I wrongly had pulled soil toward me in laying 20 seeds at a time, on top, then tossed and patted the soil on top. So seeds were shallow and easy for a rodent to dislodge. Notably, no roots were torn off or eaten. So it was just one or more curious rodents. As I originally troweled the cleared patch, I noticed a VOLE TUNNEL opening right where the privet edge was thick that I didn't pull. So likely voles just going crazy that their tunneling was screwed up. No herbivory of roots.) Five weeks after planting: The amount of sprouting was magnificent when Connie revisted this patch 4 August 2025. The above photo entails 2 sprouts at center back, 2 at left, and 1 at right. The rosy, smooth stems are diagnostic of new pawpaw sprouts.   PHOTOS LEFT show early sprouting stages in both the leaf-covered and bare parts of the patch. Recall that Connie concluded that she had planted the germinated seeds too shallow here — the next day, she had to replant 43 of the 100 that had been brought to the surface by curious rodents. However, shallow burial presents (a) warmer seed temperatures and (b) less distance to reach the surface. Both certainly accelerate sprouting and thus early photosynthesis. Whether buried shallow or deep, a loop is the usual first sign of growth above the soil surface. (Notice the pink loop by the lower right yellow leaf.) If seed burial is shallow, the seed itself may be lifted into the air (apparently with no harm) as growth continues. Note: During the 5 weeks after seed planting, Connie watered the patch 3 times, using water from the nearby Huron River. And just 5 days before this photograph, a storm brought 2 to 3 inches of rain. ABOVE: August 6, 2025, Connie counted a total of 29 new seedlings emerging: 22 were sprouting in the leaf-covered section and 7 in the bare soil. Notice the nettles growing in the foreground of the LEFT photo. This patch of tall nettles is visible in the center of the RIGHT photo — with non-native privet visible just beyond. Connie chose this spot for PATCH 1 because of the sunlight opening. In the RIGHT photo, the multi-stemmed subcanopy woody plants are the invasive Amur honeysuckle, which deeply shade the ground. The "Old End-Trail Patch" is directly to the right, whose dozen+ seedlings were planted as ungerminated seeds in October 2022. In early summer 2025, some of the honeysuckle branches were pruned to enable brief periods of sunlight to reach the otherwise mostly dark original patch. ABOVE: September 5, 2025, Connie counted a total of 36 seedlings — the most in any patch! This represents slightly more than 1/3 of the original number of germinated seeds planted. LEFT: Seedlings are visible in the leaf-covered section, while RIGHT: a close-up in the smaller section left clear after weeding. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 1.5" (half-way between Patch 1 and 2) 30 germinated seeds + 3 seedlings planted August 1, 2025 ABOVE LEFT: This patch was created 1 August 2025, after 2 days of rain, using 3 seedlings and 30 germinated seeds. In the left photo, the distant end of the patch has 3 seedlings planted there, with the 30 germinated seeds planted at mid-depths (not very deep) in the middle section as far forward as marked by the foreground stick. Middle depth was chosen in order to (a) deter curious rodents but (b) offer a possibility for seedlngs to emerge this growing season, rather than waiting till 2026. ABOVE RIGHT: This is a side view of the end of the patch where 3 seedlings were planted. Each is marked by a nearby rock and is easily visible in this photo. ABOVE: All 17 seedlings grown from seeds germinated in Connie's kitchen then planted in an outdoor hanging pot. These seedlings were all planted 1 August 2025 (along with 60 germinated seeds) into the bottomland forest site along the Huron River after 2 days of rain, and blissfully cool and mosquito-free! • NEWS FLASH 6 August 2025: Deer walks through the patch. ABOVE: Leaves were added to PATCH 1.5 on August 4, and by August 6 deer tracks show deep in the well-trowelled soil that had been weeded and planted on August 1. Photo right shows footprints near the left-most of the three seedlings (fully shown at top of the left photo). THIS RAISES A NEW QUESTION: Can rocks placed close to a seedling deter deer from stepping on it? (No sprouting visible yet of the 30 germinated seeds planted August 1, 2025.) ABOVE: Photo of PATCH 1.5 taken 6 August 2025 while standing on the trail near a large log that crosses it. A multi-stemmed Lonicera maackii (Amur honeysuckle) is foreground right. In many patches of this bottomland along the Huron River, this non-native subcanopy tree is so dominant that few plants can grow beneath it. Part of Connie's motivation to plant hundreds of pawpaw seeds here was to test whether southern Michigan's native subcanopy tree (PAWPAW) can eventually replace the honeysuckle as the subcanopy dominant. Because pawpaw leaves emerge later in the spring and fall away earlier in the autumn than do the leaves of Amur honeysuckle, native herbs grow well beneath them. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 2" (Beyond Black Cherry along trail) 30 germinated seeds planted June 28, 2025 ABOVE: 30 germinated seeds planted 28 June 2025. Notice how tall the greenery is. This patch had the same sun-adapted and some tall plants as found during weeding of Patch 2 on the same day. All were easy to pull out, plus old long grass lying flat. Vole tunnel evident at one edge here too. But only 2 seeds were visible the next day that I then reburied. I recall having done more troweling in this patch to deepen the loose soil and so installed seeds deeper one-by-one, instead of laying all down and then tossing soil on top (as I had done for Patch 1). SO DEEP BURIAL IS IMPORTANT! • NEWS FLASH LATER THAT SUMMER: SHALLOW BURIAL makes seeds vulnerable to rodents — but more likely to produce above-ground growth during the first summer. ABOVE: July 1, I collected fallen leaves as I first entered the forest and then placed those in half of each of the four patches planted 28 June. This is an experiment to see if leaves help to dissuade rodent digging. Today, July 2, I saw that leaves vastly reduced rodent exploratory diggings, and I watered both parts of SITES 1-4. Leaves placed atop the sunniest 2/3 of the patch. Next day, several seeds exposed by curious critters in leaf-free section (photo above left) and then replanted. ABOVE: Sprouts appear 6 August 2025. Five in total were visible, though it was difficult to see early sprouts in the leaf-covered section. The sprout tipped by a green leaf was the most advanced. ABOVE: PATCH 2 (6 August 2025) from the black cherry along trail. The patch is slightly visible a bit left of center, on the other side of the long log. UPDATE September 5, 2025: A total of 6 seedlings were visible. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 3A: Old Along-Trail Patch" 50 germinated seeds planted June 28, 2025 ABOVE: 2 older seedlings recovered from previous year's herbivory (marked by rocks). This patch was initiated in July 2023, when 4 germinated seeds were planted. ABOVE: For PATCH 3A rocks indicate the 2 seedlings about 6 feet apart. 28 June 2025: 50 germinated seeds were planted just beyond the right-most seedling. The left seedling was planted as a germinated seed the same time (Spring 2023), as I planted 3 along that part of trail, and never saw this one before now. But just the survivor plus one other further down trail 8 feet that had more herbivory but didn't show this year at all. ABOVE: The shortness of the green plants here indicates strong shade, so starting in 2025 Connie learned to avoid these areas and look for tall patches of mostly annuals amidst recent treefalls. All the plants here (including invasive privet) were easily pulled out before the 50 germinated seeds were planted 28 June 2025. One portion was covered with leaves; the rest left open. Next day only 2 seeds needed reburial. The overall pattern of diggings was less intense and shallower: more like a squirrel or chipmunk than a vole. Again, both seeds exposed by a rodent still had their full roots (2 inches long). • NEWS FLASH AUGUST 6, 2025: A third "older seedling" was discovered for the first time! ABOVE LEFT: The 2 older seedlings already known are each marked by 3 rocks along the right side of the left photo. On the left side of that photo, see the big brown rock with the newly discovered old pawpaw just beyond it. (Notice the original marker rock is gray and left in its original placement near this 3rd pawpaw.) ABOVE RIGHT: The newly discovered PATCH 3A old pawpaw seedling (by the gray original rock) has no obvious area of injury/regrowth on the long stem. Is this its first summer above ground? Or did Connie simply fail to notice it in 2024? ABOVE LEFT: First sprouts of June 2025 seed planting discovered 6 August 2025 for PATCH 3A. The most advanced was this pair with green leaves visible. ABOVE RIGHT: A total of 16 new sprouts were observed 6 August 2025 for PATCH 3A. This set of 3 shows the sequence of seed excision. Top center: Green at the top of stem, with seed directly below on ground. Left: Seed elevated horizontally, with green emerging from its base. Lower right corner: there is no green on the loop of stem emerging from elevated seed. ABOVE: Foreground surrounded by rocks is the elder seedling that survived herbivory from previous years. Elsewhere in the photo (and farther to the right), a total of 18 seedlings were counted September 5, 2025. A gray rock was placed by the tallest of the new crop (far left) in order to deter deer from stepping on it. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 3B" (deeper into forest from 3A) 4 seedlings planted August 1, 2025 ABOVE LEFT: August 1: Patch 3B was created deeper into the forest from the original Patch 3 seedlings (that had been planted as germinated seeds Spring 2023 but endured early herbivory). The 2 older seedlings are marked in the foreground each by a set of 3 rocks. Photographer is standing on the trail. See the patch of sunlight in center distance. The new patch was created just beyond and to the left of the sunlighted log. ABOVE RIGHT: PATCH 3B entails 4 planted seedlings. Two are easily visible on the left side of the weeded patch, all the way to the third (and biggest) at the far back point. The trowl marks a small seedling, with one leaf barely visible. ABOVE: A mid-range view of PATCH 3B, with the trowel still at the smallest seedling and the sun still shining to th right. ABOVE LEFT: 6 August 2025 overall view of PATCHES 3A & 3B, with rocks visible by all 3 older seedlings in foreground. (Patch 3B is just beyond the fallen log near distance.) ABOVE RIGHT: 6 August 2025 view of PATCH 3B with all 4 of the seedlings planted August 1 still alive. (Leaves were added during August 4 visit.) • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 3C" (beyond big walnut) 20 germinated seeds + 2 seedlings planted August 1, 2025 ABOVE: August 1: PATCH 3C established with 2 seedlings and 20 germinated seeds. Location is to the right and beyond the big walnut of the old alongside trail Patch 3A. As seen from the trail (about 30 feet downstream of Patch 3A), the blue pack at center is just to the right of the dead elm tree, on the far side of which is the new patch 3C. (Largest tree is the black cherry at far right.) ABOVE: Two vibrant seedlings were planted right next to the dead elm, 2 feet apart, in foreground of photo. BELOW: The 2 seedlings of PATCH 3C are visible at the head end of the weeded patch, with 20 germinated seeds planted in the foreground section 1 August 2025. Holes in the elm tree signify its decay. This site was chosen for being relatively sunny. Connie added to the existing branch barrier beyond its head end to deter deer from creating a path through it. But within two weeks the barrier was laying flat on the greenery just beyond the patch. ABOVE: 6 August 2025: PATCH 3C is intact, but a deer explored it. How do I know? A shiny fresh deer turd is in the lower right corner of the close-up photo. (Deer produce pellets only when eating non-marshy vegetation.) The turd is hard to see in the left photo; look for the yellow leaf near the bottom of the photo. NOTHING IS SPROUTING YET, but the two seedlings planted August 1 are still doing well. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 4A" (New TREEFALL by huge BLACK WALNUT) 125 germinated seeds planted June 28, 2025 ABOVE: Sunny site cleared and planted 28 June 2025 with 125 germinated seeds: Find this patch back at the river trail 8 feet downstream and upslope from the new huge treefall that blocks the trail. See the HUGE WALNUT (at the top of both photos). The cleared patch is 20 feet to the right of the walnut, as viewed from the trail. Some tall and thick vegetation was easy to weed out, so it is sunny just like sites of Patches 1 and 2. Next day I had to rebury 30 of the seeds; again, no roots were hurt by the curious or pissed-off rodent. (Later, I added leaves to the left side of the patch.) ABOVE RIGHT: This is where I keep the two water jugs, which are easy to fill up by walking into the river at the flat grassy bank by the muskrat area. (So during drought, pick up the jugs when you walk in.) News: Connie only had to water all of her June 28 plantings twice, as perodic rains were good after mid July. • PATCH 4A has seedling emergence in early August: ABOVE: Connie examined the patch 4 August 2025 and found seedlings in the leaf-covered section, but mostly in the open section. QUESTION: Is the right-most seed above being pushed up by the emerging seedling, as evident in the 2 photos below? ABOVE: Shallow burial lifts the seed itself into the air, as the photosynthetic part of the seedling establishes. First to appear is a pink loop, as in the lower corner of the above right photo. BELOW: Connie did not remove all disrupted material when pulling out weeds and troweling for seed-planting in this post-industrial recovering bottomland. UPDATE: As of 5 September 2025, 3 seedlings were visible in the leaf-covered section and 9 in the section left clear after weeding. This seems like a very small number of first-season emergences: 12 of 125 germinated seeds planted 9 weeks earlier. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 4B" (New TREEFALL trail-side of BLACK WALNUT) 26 germinated seeds planted July 22, 2025 ABOVE: 22 July 2025: 26 germinated seeds (with long roots) planted in black area (visible fr trail). BELOW: Seeds were planted deep, so no rodent disruption. Two days later, leaves put atop. AUGUST 25, 2025: This is when the first sprouts (just 2) became visible. The timing follows the norm for previous plantings the summer of 2025. It takes about 5 weeks for a patch of densely planted germinated seeds to show even just a few small sprouts above ground. BELOW: Photos of 2 of the 4 sprouts visible on September 8, 2025 in PATCH 4B. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 4C" (20 feet from 4B) 22 Germinated seeds planted September 5, 2025 ABOVE LEFT: Patch 4C was planted 6 weeks after Patch 4B was planted, and is just 20 feet away. The arrow marks the trail. ABOVE RIGHT: Patch 4C was easy to weed. It was a monoculture of young privet, less than 2 feet tall. (The privet patch increased in height towards the back, perhaps indicating more sunlight there. But tall privet is much harder to pull.   By mid-August, pawpaw seeds in containers of moist moss in Connie's kitchen had stopped germinating. The 22 germinated seeds planted in PATCH 4C were the very last increment of seeds for 2025 planting. Previous experiments by Connie have indicated that some pawpaw seeds require 2 winter stratifications before germinating. So all the ungerminated seeds will be counted, then re-stratified in forest pits the coming winter. Spring of 2026 those seeds will be brought into the kitchen to promote germination. Only by the end of Summer 2026 will Connie be able to calculate the percentage of seeds from the Fall 2024 harvest at Midland Michigan that germinated in 1 year, in 2 years, or not at all. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 4.5" (next to main trail) 30 Germinated seeds planted August 18, 2025 ABOVE: PATCH 4.5 is the first patch one encounters after turning left at the SPIRAL TREE, heading for all the downstream patches. It entails 3 distinct weeded areas. The biggest weeded patch contains 15 germinated seeds and is in the foreground of the above photo. Yes, it is separated from the main human trail only by a log and some greenery. Notice the red cross on the trailside tree, which was painted by some unknown person early in 2025.   ABOVE LEFT: The weeded dark ground nearest Connie's pack on the trail is the 15-seed planting. The foreground weeded site has 5 seeds. (This photo is looking upstream.) ABOVE RIGHT: Standing on the trail, with Connie's pack behind her, this photograph is looking downstream. This final weeded site (10 seeds) is the dark area right of the trail. ABOVE: All three planted areas of PATCH 4.5 are visible in this photo, looking upstream. The trail-side tree (elm or ash) has a red-painted cross on both sies. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 5A" (Hackberry by creek) 120 germinated seeds planted July 1, 2025 ABOVE: 1 July 2025: 120 germinated seeds were planted soon after the creek crossing and near where the 8" diam hackberry has a red cross on both sides (marking the human trail). Look for the 2 white cloth ribbons, 20 to 30 feet northward of the trail. ABOVE: 100 germinated seeds planted far side of log; then leaf covered. BELOW: 20 germinated seeds planted in black near side of log (no leaves). ABOVE: As of 25 August 2025 (8 weeks after planting), just 6 of the 100 germinated seeds that were planted in the now-leaf-covered section, were easily visible above ground. None of the 20 in the cleared section were visible. Fortunately, owing to plantings that began in 2022, Connie was aware that many seeds will not produce seedlings until midway through their second summer. Even in the sunniest planting sites of 2025, it took 5 weeks for the earliest sprouts to appear above-ground. ABOVE: As of 5 September 2025, a total of 11 sprouts were visible. Size ranged from the 2 big ones by the nettle, to the tiny one visible far left. "PATCH 5B" (Hackberry by creek, near trail full sun) 29 germinated seeds planted July 19, 2025 ABOVE & BELOW: 29 germinated seeds planted deep July 19, 2025 (watered July 21). No rodent disruption after 2 days. Leaves added 25 July 2025. ABOVE: September 5, 2025: Seedlings (just 2) begin to emerge. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 5C" (Hackberry by creek, near trail, full sun) 24 germinated seeds + 2 seedlings planted July 25, 2025 ABOVE & BELOW: 25 July 2025: 24 germinated seeds + 2 seedlings planted deep by hackberry. ABOVE and BELOW: 2 seedlings grown in window box planted at upper end of Patch 5C. ABOVE: Long stick marks lower end of the planting. Site watered and leaves then added. ABOVE & BELOW: Patch 5C visible from this angle is immediately right of 5A. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 5D" (Hackberry by creek, near 2 redbud trees) 5 seedlings planted August 1, 2025 ABOVE: August 1 Patch 5D was planted after 2 days of rain. Circle marks the weeded Patch 5D; rectangle marks hackberry with red cross along trail. Photo taken while standing on trail near one redbud. The second redbud is visible rightmost side. BELOW: 5 seedlings were planted August 1 (and no seeds). Circles mark the 3 visible pawpaws. The 2 smallest of the set are marked by white arrows and are shown close-up at right. Each had suffered early injury in their outdoors hanging pot that held a total of 17 germinated seeds — with all surviving. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 5E" (Creek Slope, near all Hackberry patches 5A through 5D) 15 germinated seeds planted August 4, 2025 ABOVE: 4 August 2025 Connie shallow-planted 15 germinated pawpaw seeds here. In both close and distant photos, PATCH 5E is the weeded area directly behind Connie's walking stick. Here the bottomland begins to slope toward the upland part of the forest. The creek is visible foreground of RIGHT photo, and Connie stores 2 watering bottles nearby for watering all parts of PATCH 5 (if rainfall is delayed). • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 6" (farthest inland of bottomland) 94 germinated seeds + 5 seedlings planted July 21, 2025 ABOVE: Sunny PATCH 6 weeded left of big walnut. ABOVE: 21 July 2025: PATCH 6 in 2 adjacent blocks were weeded; then 20 ungerminated seeds were deep-planted in left patch; 64 in the right patch. ABOVE & BELOW: Window box of 5 seedlings planted at head end of PATCH 6. ABOVE RIGHT: Window boxes of pawpaw seedlngs get direct early morning sun. Farthest buttermilk carton contains 2 small American persimmon seedlings. ABOVE: Right-most patch of 64 deep-planted ungerminated seeds. Leaves added to both patches 25 July 2025, after watering. ABOVE: One small outlier group of PATCH 6 was created August 1 by planting 10 germinated seeds, after weeding, shown by white circle. (A rodent hole under a log back there was concerning, and so was a group of disturbed bees hovering around another nearby log.) Meanwhile, the group of 5 window-box seedlings originally planted in this patch are very visible in foreground, and you can see old oak leaves that were added to all parts of the patch on August 4. No watering necessary because 2 inches of rain fell the previous 2 days. On 6 August, 5 visible seeds were shallow reburied; no planted seeds had sprouted yet. More worrisome was that deer evidently had decided that Connie's weeding of the part of Patch 6 to the right of the log created possibility for a new trail! • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS "PATCH 7" (by old seedling 20 ft left of trail, underpass) 18 germinated seeds + 2 seedlings planted July 21, 2025 ABOVE: One old seedling survived to these mid-summmer 2025 photos, from a group of 4 germinated seeds planted about 4 feet apart in July 2023. Previous year(s) herbivory was obvious upon close inspection of the stem. ABOVE: Greenery weeded. Singleton pawpaw visible at center 2 feet beyond. ABOVE: 21 July 2025: 18 germinated seeds planted deep in the weeded area. ABOVE: Leaves added to PATCH 7 preserve moisture and deter rodents. ABOVE & BELOW: August 1: Two seedlings added to PATCH 7; one to the left of the original pawpaw and one to the right. 3 Days Later the original pawpaw is knocked over: ABOVE & BELOW: Evidence suggests it was stepped on by a deer or a hopping rabbit (and autumn of 2024 the step-kill was very obvious at a seedling in the Old River Patch). A previous year's low-stem herbivory is evident in the center of the below photo. Will this pawpaw be able to rise again? LESSON LEARNED: Even if a site is selected that is a "dead end" for a deer, do not clear away all the tall vegetation that makes the new weeded patch visible from the deer/human well-used trail. ABOVE: Fortunately, the 2 pot-grown seedlings planted 3 days earlier look very happy. ABOVE: First seedling (center) observed 5 September 2025 in Patch 7. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8A (by winter-stratifying slope pits) no new seeds planted 2025 ABOVE (1 August 2025): PATCH 8A germinated seeds were planted Summer 2024, where the bottomland meets the steep slope heading to the UPLAND TRAIL. A white rock and Connie's white notebook are set by 2 of the 4 seedlings that emerged Summer 2025. Notice how dark the forest is upward on the slope. This is because of the dense and invasive Amur Honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii, whose vertically ribbed and multi-stemmed growth form is foreground right. Note: From May through June, PATCH 8 is easy to find because a large mayapple clone is immediately left of it, and left/upslope of the mayapples is where Connie established her winter stratification pits. BELOW: Just 4 of the total 10 seeds that were planted in 2024 produced seedlings in 2025 that have escaped herbivory thus far. ABOVE & BELOW: Two of the four seedlings. The notebook is where Connie documents plantings and observations in the field. Connie did not remove plants growing near the left-most seedling, as she has begun "thinking like a deer" and wants to discourage deer from stepping there. ____________________ BELOW: Moving leftward 20 feet reveals the final 2 seedlings emerged in 2025. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8B (near Mayapple Patch) 15 germinated seeds planted August 14, 2025 On 14 AUGUST 2025, Connie Barlow donned her mosquito-net hat to plant a total of 92 seeds in 3 new patches — all near the site of the existing near-slope patch planted Summer 2024 that is now called PATCH 8A. Her style here was very different from her experimental plantings in June and July. The earlier plantings entailed weeding large patches and then planting many seeds closely together. But in the 3 new "patches" she established in zone 8 on this day, she planted just 1 seed at a time — usually no closer than 2 or 3 feet from the previously planted seed. The sunny sites she chose for planting were thickly covered with herbs, some of which were at least 2 feet tall, with an occasional short privet shadowed underneath. Only a few herbs and privet were pulled for each seed planted. With this style of planting, the "patch" looked unaltered in the end — as you will see in the PATCH 8C photos that follow. She therefore used ribbons of pink cloth to mark patches, as there will be no other way to find them again. A shortcoming of this new experimental style is that Connie can't expect to begin documenting new seedlings next year, nor possibly the year following that. Pawpaw seedlings will be impossible to see at a distance — and could be injured if one tries to enter the intense greenery to look for them. As usual, she avoided planting next to deer trails. Notably, by end of summer the annual greenery here is so dense that there are few evident deer trails. One cannot know how that may shift as the winter unfolds. ABOVE: A pink ribbon at the left marks the eastern side of PATCH 8B. At right another pink ribbon is close to the western side. PATCH 8A is about 100 feet away, into the dense shade seen beyond the far ribbon. During May and June a large MAYPPLE PATCH, is encountered in that direction. BELOW: Looking westward from the above closer ribbon. The herbs where Connie is photographing are much shorter than where she planted a total of 15 germinated seeds. BELOW: The 15 seeds planted in PATCH 8B came from a root-growing experiment: ABOVE: Summer of 2025 I tested 15 seeds over the course of 10 days to document the speed of root growth (in my kitchen) — and if there were any differences between newly emerging, pointed roots and those with black square tips (signifying root loss during excavation of winter-stratification pits so late in the spring that some had already long germinated). ABOVE LEFT: There are 3 columns, each with 5 seeds. Column 1 is short, pointy, newly germinated. Column 2 has white round spot visible where germination will happen. Column 3 seeds were injured during excavation, evidenced by black, square root tip. ABOVE RIGHT: Each seed is in its same placement. Column 3 shows growth has resumed in different configurations and speed. Notice that the second from top seed regrew 2 roots from the damaged stub, while the stub itself elongated. Third from top also elongated, but the configuration of the tip hasn't changed. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8C (near Big Walnut along ephemeral big pond) 43 germinated seeds planted August 14, 2025 The UPLAND TRAIL beginning from the cemetery edge slopes steeply to the bottomland, where it ends. There one needs to know the territory in order to find the less visible trail (off to the right) that immediately crosses a small creek. It then continues onward to the Huron River — and thus to almost all the other numbered patches in Connie's PAWPAW PLANTING EXPERIMENT. Immediately to the left (south), however, a short trail begins that Connie (and others) attempt to keep open because there is an attractive feature at its end. Just as one begins to see a BIG EPHEMERAL POOL, there is a strikingly grand WALNUT TREE (below), perched on its bank. ABOVE: In this August 14 photo, Connie stands where the mud of the BIG EPHEMERAL POOL begins, and the WALNUT presides. Walnut and pawpaw regularly grow in bottomlands of southern Michigan, but only in raised portions of it, and thus above ephemeral pools. Another walnut is darkly visible center back (Connie's walking stick is center foreground against a leaning honeysuckle.) Where the tall greenery begins, a total of 43 germinated seeds were planted individually over an amoeba-like set of sunny patches about 70 feet by 50 feet. ABOVE: The big WALNUT featured in the previous photo stands at the left. This central fallen tree, not yet grounded, is also visible in the previous photo. Connie planted 8 germinated seeds along the log and amidst the tall greenery rightward. ABOVE: Looking northward toward the WALNUT end of the planted site, Connie is standing by a a tree marking the southern end. This is the only SHAGBARK HICKORY she has ever seen in the bottomland, as it is an upland species. This rarity makes it an ideal site marker. PINK CIRCLE surrounds the PINK CLOTH tied onto a grapevine. Within the greenery visible here (and a bit poolward of the pink cloth, too) Connie planted 25 germinated seeds. Again, the pattern she used this day had seeds planted individually, widely spaced, and after easily pulling out only a small amount of greenery in each spot. ABOVE: Looking at the same SHAGBARK HICKORY from the opposite direction, with the non-native fallen HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera maackii) central. The extremely dark and vacant ground that abuts this seed-planting site at the south has a subcanopy of dominant HONEYSUCKLE, which shades out virtually every herb. ABOVE: A second PINK CLOTH was hung to mark the far eastern edge of the planting, heading eastward from the ELM labelled in a previous photo. HONEYSUCKLE shading is starkly evident at the right. Between the ELM and here, Connie planted another 10 seeds. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8D (eastward of PATCH 8A) 34 seeds (1/3 germinated) planted August 14, 2025 ABOVE: White circles pinpoint the rocks marking the seedlings (planted as germinated seeds in 2024) that were visible August 2025 at the east side of PATCH 8A. When Connie planted PATCH 8D (14 August 2025), she hung two white cloth markers. The red circle envelops the distant cloth hung 30 feet away. When one stands there (red circle) and looks directly right (southward), the pink cloth marker of PATCH D becomes visible. The slope rising left of the log becomes much steeper, and at the top is the UPLAND TRAIL. ABOVE: PATCH 8D. August 14, 2025 is when 34 seeds were planted here and marked by the pink cloth arching over. (Only about 1/3 of the seeds had germinated.) The greenery entailed almost exclusively annual plants (very easy to remove), with some short privet mixed in (a woody shrub, so harder to pull). Here, as with newly planted PATCH 8B and PATCH 8C, no large area was weeded in advance. Instead, single seeds were planted (with no or minimal weeding). Each was planted a foot or more away from the previous seed. BELOW: View of PATCH 8D from the opposite direction. The dark area with fallen logs is where the steep slope to the upland begins. The photographer is standing at the start of the patch and looking northward. The previous photo was taken while standing in the dark area. Directly to the left (west) of the dark area some 30 feet is where the eastern edge of PATCH 8A begins. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8E (southward of PATCH 8D) 42 germinated seeds planted on August 20 & 24, 2025 ABOVE LEFT: For PATCH 8E, 12 germinated seeds were planted August 20, about 40 feet southward of PATCH 8D. The pink cloth marking 8D is visible from this new patch and within the white circle of the image. ABOVE RIGHT: Another 30 germinated seeds were planted August 24, 10 feet eastward. ABOVE: Both planting sites in PATCH 8E were very easy to weed, as the herb layer (a lot of nettles) was underlain by shallow-rooted grasses that easily rolled back like a rug. ABOVE & BELOW: While pawpaw is adapted for slow growth beneath native deciduous shade, treefalls of invasive old-growth Lonicera offer superb opportunity to establish pawpaw where their growth can be fast (and ultimately shade out new-growth Lonicera). ABOVE: Connie's red pack and walking stick mark the far side of the spot where 12 seeds were planted. The 30-seed spot has the trowel. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8F (southeastward of PATCH 8E) (48 germinated seeds planted on August 20 & 24, 2025) ABOVE: For PATCH 8F, 18 germinated seeds were planted August 20 on the near side of the fallen tree, and 30 more August 24 on the far side. (Upper left hangs a white cloth.) Because this was 50 feet beyond the previous same-day planting (PATCH 8E), there are 2 white cloth markers between the two patches — visible one to the next. This photo was taken after the seeds were planted, thus indicating how invisible this patch should be to deer passing by from mid to late summer. When Connie visited Patch 8F again, 1 day after planting the 30 seeds, and 5 days after planting the 18 seeds, the near spot was untouched (both parts of PATCH 8E were also untouched). Alas, the far planting site of PATCH 8F was hugely disrupted — Connie found on the surface (and then reburied) 9 of the 30 seeds. Two of those had been bitten in half. (Connie had never seen bitten seeds before, even when plenty had been brought to the surface.) She had deeply trowled the whole site after weeding, so a very deep deer track was not surprising. But bringing to the surface all those seeds would have required a curious or angry rodent. Might there be a woodchuck entrance farther along the log that Connie did not explore? ABOVE - 18 SEEDS: Connie had to walk into the greenery to show where the weeded/planted patch of 18 seeds is visible. As with, the previous planting at Patch 8E, she encountered a flattened grass layer overtopped by annuals (including nettles) — both very easy to pull. Long pants and sleeves and gloves easily make nettle pulling uneventful. But Connie learned earlier that same day that dense privet near a log can be a lot more dangerous. Her first weeding attempt that morning was near PATCH 9B. Stings from 2 wasps (one stung right through her thick glove) had Connie abort that endeavor. BELOW - 30 SEEDS: Here is what this planting spot looked like right after weeding and planting. Obviously, it is at a dead end for deer to walk into, but the next-day upset showed that apparently one did! • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8G (southwest of PATCH 8F) (70 germinated seeds planted on August 26, 2025) ABOVE: Five small sites were easily weeded for planting germinated seeds as shown in this photo.The previous patch, Patch 8F, is just 20 feet to the left of this photo. The fallen tree visible there is an impenetrable barrier. Connie's red pack is visible between the pair of tens. ABOVE: Two dead trees have created this sunlit space. White circles mark the 5 planted spots toward the distant 8F, as Connie surmised that the pair of trees will eventually fall toward the foreground. ABOVE: Four of the five planted spots of Patch 8G are visible in these 2 photos (Connie's stick marks the spot closest to the big log (upper left) that signals the previous planting (Patch 8F). A return visit 4 days later (on August 30) showed no animal disturbance of any of the 5 spots. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 8H (southwest of PATCH 8G) (41 germinated seeds planted on August 30, 2025) ABOVE LEFT: A foreground native ASH tree (alive!) and a non-native LONICERA honeysuckle (multi-stemmed to its right) is an excellent place to see the big log of the 8F planting and the greenery of the 8G planting straight ahead. ABOVE RIGHT: Photographing from the opposite direction (Lonicera at left and Ash close a right), achieves a view of PATCH 8H planting site 40 feet southwestward, next to the long ephemeral pond (sunlit center distance). ABOVE: Two patches were weeded, about 10 feet apart. The phemeral pond (with red maple trees) is visble several feet downward from the planted sites of 21 and 20 germinated seeds. While weeding the 20-seed spot, the entrance to a vole tunnel by a small privet at the edge became visible. Soil was excellent. In the RIGHT photo, a square marks the metal plate leaning on a maple &— noted here because, when the pond is dry, one can easily find this site by walking through the open area directly from the big walnut at PATCH 8C. BELOW: A view of PATCH 8H while standing in the ephemeral pond by the big red maple with the metal plate. THREE DAYS LATER ... VOLE HOLES! ABOVE LEFT: Returning to this PATCH 8H three days later (September 2), 3 of the 21 seeds here had been dug up and left on the surface (roots intact). The trowel points to where Connie observed an apparently new vole hole. ABOVE RIGHT: When Connie initially weeded PATCH 8H, she noticed the vole hole (at top) directly at its edge. That gave her pause, but she persevered in weeding and planting. She knew it would be important to return and look for excavated seeds. Sure enough, when she returned, 7 of the total 20 seeds were now on the surface (all but one had roots intact). More, she observed a new vole hole within her weeded area (bottom of photo). BELOW: Connie returned to the patch a third time (September 5), there were no new exacavations of seeds. She close-photographed all 3 holes. LESSON: If you see a vole hole while weeding, stop! Create a patch elsewhere. Continue to weed and plant only if you commit to returning to the site in 2 or 3 days. In all the patches of Summer 2025 where rodents brought seeds to the surface, they only did that once. After the excavated seeds were replanted, no disturbance happened again. As well, even if you see no vole holes while weeding and planting, it is highly recommended to return within a few days just to check — especially if you shallow-planted the seeds. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 9A (Upstream, close to river) 50 germinated seeds planted August 8, 2025 PATCH 9A, planted 8 August 2025, is the farthest "upstream" of all the bottomland plantings. ABOVE (8 August 2025): Here the river is about 80 feet to the left of these photos, flowing from the NW and we are looking upstream and parallel to it. Patch 9A is multiple small plantings in the light green distance. This is where tall herbs (right photo) signify a lot of sunlight. In contrast, Connie is photographing this site while standing in a large area almost devoid of herbal groundcover. This is because the subcanopy is dense Amur Honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii, close-ups of which are foreground top of the LEFT photo. (The Guardian/Spiral Tree is very near where Connie stands.) Patches 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 begin about 100 yards behind the photographer. Patches 5 and 8 are about the same distance to the right. A dominant deer trail is visible in both above photos. The 3 PHOTOS BELOW show small open patches where Connie weeded and planted a total of 50 germinated seeds 8 August 2025. As usual, the annual herbs were easy to remove, but non-native woody PRIVET dominates that area — and that species is difficult to pull out by the roots if taller than 2 feet. Connie is motivated in this experimental planting to determine whether NATIVE PAWPAW, once established, can be encouraged over time to become the dominant subcanopy woody plant. Already she and a helpful colleague have done some pruning of low honeysuckle branches shading the original "End-of-Trail Patch" dense planting. But at age 73, Connie realizes that younger volunteers will eventually be needed to continue this experiment. ABOVE 3 PHOTOS: The reason 50 germinated seeds were planted in multiple small weeded patches at this site is two-fold: (1) In the large patches already planted, deer prints regularly showed up within a few days of weeding and planting. (2) In taking on the practice of "thinking like a deer," Connie was horrified to discern that even though a patch seemed to be properly sited away from a deer trail, its very presence could be viewed by resident deer as the beginning of a new trail to try out. See Patch 6 and Patch 3B for examples. Indeed, when Connie planted the first set of seeds in the "Old River Patch" in 2022, there was no deer trail through it. But one developed since then, and in August 2025 she noticed a newly emerged seedling from that episode that was just a foot off to the side of that trail. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH 9B (Upstream - closest to river) 30 germinated seeds planted August 18, 2025 ABOVE: PATCHES 9A and 9B are the farthest "upstream" of all the bottomland plantings. This is PATCH 9B, where a total of 30 germinated seeds were planted August 18, 2025. Two of the three spots that Connie weeded and then planted (10 seeds each) are in the foreground. (The photographer is standing next to the third site.) The Huron River is visible in the background. The slope is just 30 feet away and drops off rather steeply 7 feet down to the river. The river flows from right to left. ABOVE LEFT: Looking directly downward onto the third spot planted, both other sites are visible, too. (The first that was planted is slightly visible closest to the multi-stemmed Lonicera at upper left.) Almost all the greenery is highly invasive PRIVET. Connie had actually started to pull privet farther to the sunny right, where the privet is taller. But tall privet is beyond her physical capabilities now that she is in her 70s. ABOVE RIGHT: When finished planting, Connie tied a white cloth (upper left) onto one of the Lonicera stems. She then found several fallen Lonicera branches to cover the entire patch. She purposefully weeded only small patches and stayed away from any apparent deer trail in order to not provoke their curiosity. The laid branches may serve as further deterence. She's never tried that before, but the large Lonicera stems already on the ground suggested this might be a good addition, at least until spring. IN THE FUTURE: It is possible that pawpaw may be able to outpace the privet in gaining height. Once that happens, pawpaw could begin to shade out the privet. Because pawpaw can exceed Lonicera in height, it might then be able to shade out even the old growth Lonicera. But for the next few years, it may be important for humans to maintain these small openings. HOW TO FIND PATCH 9B: Locate the "Guardian/Spiral" Lonicera, where the main human trail turns to the left (downstream and thus to most of the plantings). From there look toward the river and find the easiest way to move directly toward it. Soon you will see a white cloth (foreground PHOTO ABOVE). Look upstream 30 feet to the white cloth marking the actual patch, which is encircled in red in the photo. (The river is visible at the left.) • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH Upland Trail Begins 12 germinated seeds + 1 seedling planted August 4, 2025 one elder seedling discovered along the trail ABOVE: AUGUST 4, 2025: Seedling on blue pan is planted in a new Patch called "Upland Trail Begins". Beyond it are two weeded areas, each containing 6 germinated seeds. Japanese barberry is close to the seedling. Connie was disappointed with the soil (gray sandy) but planted there anyway. In contrast to the upland, all the bottomlands plantings are dark brown loamy soil. ABOVE: The seedling, with the 6-seed middle patch to its right (eastward) BELOW: Middle patch with the eastmost patch (6 seeds) weeded at grass edge. ABOVE: Standing on trail, which begins 50 yards to the right (east). Planting area is downslope, center back. BELOW: The tree in the above photo with the red paint is seen below as the first tree on the left side of the trail. (Two more trees next to trail also have red paint — installer unknown; painting happened March 2025.) ____________________ Checking on UPLAND TRAIL BEGINS (2 days later, August 6): ABOVE: Two days after Connie planted this potted seedling, the ground was still wet, but she also watered it. Notice the nearby Japanese barberry, which is dominant in the area. ABOVE LEFT: One month later (September 5), Connie decided to saunter a bit off the upland trail looking for seedlings derived from her sparce planting of seeds in previous years. Seen for the first time is this seedling, amidst a vast expanse of 'Lilies of the Valley' creeping in from the cemetery. Its stem shows evidence of having been nipped off in a prior year. ABOVE RIGHT: Standing on the trail (about 30 feet nearer the cemetery than the set of triple-painted trees that marks this patch), the photo shows a red-painted trail tree, along with Connie's pack directly behind the seedling. That is about 8 feet off the trail. A blue cloth dangles from a maple sapling left of the pack. The cloth was removed when Connie placed a WHITE ROCK near the seedling. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH by FENCE 4 germinated seeds planted in 2025, and 6 previous seedlings flourish • EXTENDING RIGHT ALONG THE FENCE: A total of 3 elder seedlings (2023 planting) newly discovered in early September 2025, supplemented with 4 germinated seeds. ABOVE & BELOW First week of SEPTEMBER 2025: NEW DISCOVERY of 2 seedlings right along the fence that would have been planted as seeds in 2023. Connie's stick perfectly matched the distance between the two. ABOVE: Close-up views of the rightmost seedling, showing prior herbivory once or twice. Logic would suggest that if the stem is snipped late in the summer or into the fall, then sufficient photosynthates would reside in the roots to push out new growth the following spring. But if the leaves vanish soon after unfurling, the fates might be less generous. ABOVE LEFT: Orange circle surrounds an orange cloth tied onto a thin tree adjacent to the two elder seedlings in the above set of photos. (The upland trail is exactly at the ground horizon, left to right, which is east to west.) Connie's stick in the foreground spans the distance over which 4 germinated seeds were planted on September 8, 2025. Notice the blue cloth hung low on the fence. ABOVE RIGHT: Also on September 8, 2025, a third elder seedling (white circle) was discovered along the fence, very near the trail. Two fence poles extend from the seedling to the main upland trail. BELOW: Two views of the third elder seedling, which appears to have suffered no previous stem herbivory. ____________________ • BELOW: A pair of elder seedlings near the BIG ROTTING TREE: ABOVE: Only 2 of the 6 germinated seeds planted July 2023 had survived as seedlings through this photo in August 2025. The two are on either side of Connie's horizontal stick with the blue tape. BELOW: The 2 elder seedlings at the stick ends and marked by newly placed white rocks. BELOW: The 2 surviving elder seedlings.    ____________________ • BELOW: Standing on the main upland trail, Connie photographed on 8 August 2025 a never-before-observed single emergent from her along-trail-planting of 20 seeds in 2023. She marked the new discovery with a white rock on the downslope side and added a thick branch to encourage deer to notice the area and step over or around it. The greater number of leaves and their location spanning the whole stem suggests that this seedling actually emerged the prior year, with no herbivory.    In the ABOVE LEFT PHOTO, notice the large tree at center-back. That is the BIG ROTTING TREE shown in an earlier photo in this "FENCE" group. Exactly leftward (westward) of that tree, about 25 feet, is the fence. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS PATCH Upland Bedframe 23 germinated seeds planted August 4, 2025 ABOVE: This is the only one of 6 germinated seeds planted in the flats near the bedframe back in April of 2024 that was visible 4 August 2025. So another 2 germinated seeds were planted that day about 2 feet away (left and right off the top of the photo). NEWSFLASH: This seedling was entirely gone on Connie's visit to this patch on September 2. ABOVE LEFT: Another view of the single living seedling from 2024 planting. ABOVE RIGHT: Distant view showing the 2024 seedling, plus a new weeded patch where 8 germinated seeds were planted 4 August 2025. Connie was disappointed in the gray sandy soil there. (The UPLAND TRAIL is about 12 feet directly to the right.) BELOW: View of the new patch of 8 germinated seeds. Japanese barberry is on all sides; smaller ones were removed from patch. The fallen branch plus barberry thicket indicates deer will not try to move through or jump over. ____________________ ABOVE: AUGUST 4, 2025: Only 1 of 5 germinated seeds that were planted April 2024 on the slope west of the bedframe was visible (8 inches above rock in both photos). ABOVE: Notice the 2 trees at slope top, and the gray, nearly verticle stick on the slope beneath them — which is the same stick as in the previous row of photos. So on 4 August 2025, Connie planted 10 germinated seeds to the left of the stick (and thus the lone seedling) and 3 to the right. The left and right edges of the photo mark the full distance of 13 seeds planted. ABOVE LEFT: The slope shown in the previous photo (of 1 seedling) is distant here. Notice Connie's walking stick resting on a log lower right. The blue tape is directly behind a NEW SEEDLING SHE JUST DISCOVERED on August 4, 2025. ABOVE RIGHT: This seedling took 2 summers to emerge from its germinated seed planted in July 2023. (No obvious herbivory was on the lower stem.) Two additional germinated seeds had been planted along that log (farther back) at the same time. Both emerged mid-summer 2024 — but were completely removed by one or more curious herbivores (rodents living under the log?) soon after their emergence. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS Steep Trail Down Discovery of a new seedling planted (as seed) in 2023 ABOVE: On August 26, 2025, after planting more germinated seeds in the bottomland, Connie Barlow was walking the steep part of the trail back to the upland forest and then to exit the cemetery. In 2021 through 2023, a few hundreds of seeds had been planted sparsely, some very near the trail. She spotted one to her left — in perfect condition! Her walking stick marks its location in the LEFT photo. Several days later, on another seed-planting adventure, she placed a rock to mark its spot for others to see. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS Sphagnum Moss Ideal for Germinating Seeds Connie uses sphagnum moss gathered from a huge cranberry bog (below) in northern Michigan. ABOVE: Connie Barlow, May 2011, in the cranberry bog of Barlow family property in northern Michigan. The paper birch at right are where her mother's ashes were placed in 1998. BELOW: Ripe cranberries at the top of a mossy hummock in the bog. • RETURN TO LINKED LIST OF PLANTINGS Seed-planting site along the Thornapple River of southern Michigan (June 2022) June 5, 2022, Connie Barlow planted 40 seeds mid-slope along a high bank of the Thornapple River in Hastings, Michigan. The seeds had been naturally "winter stratified" in a hole Connie had dug on the forested slope along the cemetery in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The photos below show the planting area directly below the cemetery section that contains the graves of Connie's colonizing settler ancestors. ABOVE: The cemetery begins at the top of the slope, as visible in the upper right. Connie took this photograph standing midslope where she began planting. An advantage of planting pawpaw seeds here is that (a) if civilization continues, the cemetery will remain as a guard against development that might harm the slope, and (b) wise people keep a steep river slope intact to prevent erosion — and the pawpaw clonal root system that creates a pawpaw "patch" guards against slope erosion. CONNIE'S STORY: "It is ironic that my great-great-great grandfather Nathan Barlow Sr. was buried here long after he died. He settled near here in 1937, soon after the Indigenous peoples were forced into ceding their lands. He dammed up a tributary of the Thornapple River (now called Barlow Lake) and there built a sawmill.     His own actions thus contributed to massive deforestation that, in turn, led to immense erosion. Two decades after his death, the erosion had so undermined his original burial site that he was moved to the Hastings cemetery, where his daughter-in-law Melissa Tyler Barlow had been one of the first burials. His son (Nathan Barlow Jr.) and their 4 children (including my great-grandfather, Fred Hayes) are also buried there." ABOVE and BELOW: The Thornapple River viewed from midslope, where Connie planted 40 pawpaw seeds. ABOVE: The deer trail that Connie planted the seeds along. Pawpaw is an ideal native plant to help restore a forest wherever deer are unnaturally abundant; pawpaw stems and leaves are too poisonous for even winter-hungry deer to browse. ABOVE and BELOW: These herbs indicate a healthy deciduous forest that has created rich soil and is well drained — and thus is also ideal pawpaw habitat. ABOVE: For anyone vulnerable to poison ivy, a June planting is an ideal time to plant pawpaw seeds. At this time of year, the leaves of poison ivy are visible. Poison ivy cannot grow into vines when a seed falls onto a summer-shaded forest floor such as this. But it can germinate from a berry dropped or defecated by a bird. It will not live for long. Notice several examples of small poison ivy plants in this photo. ABOVE and BELOW: Subcanopy ferns are also good indicators for planting pawpaw seeds. A portion of Maidenhair Fern is visible in the lower left corner above, and in its full glory in the photo below. • RETURN TO TOP Table of Topics for Parts 1 & 2 (on separate webpages) PART 1: Who Are the Pollinators? • Conclusions & Recommendations for Attracting Pollinators • Video Documentation of Pawpaw Pollinator Fieldwork • Collecting and Distributing Seeds • Other Anatomical Features of Pawpaw • Basic Elements of the Pollinator Study • Sites (Fruited and Fruitless) for Field Observations and Comparisons • STUDY AIMS with Three Alternative Hypotheses re POLLINATION • Pawpaw as an ancient flower type (CRUCIAL READING FOR SERIOUS OBSERVERS) • Pawpaw Flower Stages • Food for Pollinators • Pawpaw Pollination: Knowns and Unknowns • Probable Pollinators of Spring 2021 - Nitulidid Beetles • APPENDIX: PHOTOS of Spring 2021 surveillance at sites (insects, pawpaw stages, ecology) • South African Cycad Paper Distinguishes Casual Visitors from Effective Pollinators • Ecological Interpretations of 2021 Field Experience • BACKGROUND PAPERS for Ascertaining Ecological Interpretations • RECOMMENDATIONS for ORCHARD HABITAT MANAGEMENT • FURTHER QUESTIONS and SUGGESTIONS FOR EXPERIMENTS • Guidance for the Future Pollinator Watches • Additional POLLINATOR Information from Technical Papers PART 2: RESTORING RECIPROCITY • Appreciating Asimen: Geography and Taxonomic Relatives • Appreciating Asimen: Fully resists deer browsing • Appreciating Asimen: Prevents Invasion by Japanese Stiltgrass • Appreciating Asimen: Ethnobotany • Toward Renewing and Expanding Reciprocity • Could pawpaw help compensate for the loss of Black Ash as a fiber source? • Could pawpaw restore the subcanopy where deer are overpopulated? • Appreciating Asimen: Original Instructions • New York State: Where Pawpaw is a "Threatened Species" • What About American Persimmon? Return to linked Table of Topics Bio and Contact Info of Connie Barlow