Typical advice for germinating acorns and nuts includes the tip to put
them in a bucket of water, and throw away those that float, because
they are inviable. I wanted to see if this same test was useful for
paw paw seeds.
Last fall I saved ~50 paw paw seeds. I cleaned them and put them in a
moist paper towel in the fridge as soon as I ate them. Later I put
them all through the float test, almost half of them were floaters,
but saved them anyway, in a separate bag.
In late January, I took 5 floaters and 5 sinkers, put them in ziploc
bags with a wet paper towel. In 1 to 2 months, all 10 seeds
germinated. The first floater germinated a day or two after the first
sinker, the last of each also germinated within a couple days of one
another.
Anyhow, maybe the paw paw gurus already knew this, but I thought I'd
share with the list: don't throw away floating paw paw seeds!
Alex
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[NAFEX] minor paw paw seed experiment,
abb7, 04/01/2009