“It’s not just more warming — it’s more temperature extremes too,” said Sheri Crabtree, a pawpaw researcher at Kentucky State University, reflecting on the various challenges to the plant’s future. Pawpaws are flowering about two weeks earlier in the spring than they did several decades ago, but temperature fluctuations can lead to hard freezes after they flower, causing crop loss.
The University of Georgia researchers also found that because of low genetic diversity, it’s not clear whether the pawpaws that do manage to establish themselves elsewhere will have the same kind and quality of edible fruits as the ones we know today. APawpaws need a period of cold for their seeds to germinate in the spring; toward the southern end of their range, they likely won’t get that as temperatures rise.
by urbanization and large-scale agriculture in much of the Midwest and Appalachia. And climate change is expected to bring both more extreme droughts and heavy rains to the region — neither of which is good for pawpaws, Chmiel said.Harvests can of course vary from year to year, Chmiel said, but he’s also noticed changes recently, with a third of his trees dying. He says he’s not sure why it’s happened, but noted that heavy rains could have been a factor.