The U of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison has Iowa "native" pawpaws that ripen every year and, based on my few tastes, are small but were tropical custardy in flavour. In one of my chats with the Director Emeritus, Ed Hasselkus, he said that there was a reasonable possibility that the Iowa plants originated from seeds spat out by railroad passengers since the plants are generally found near the tracks. Of course pawpaws are often found in river bottoms, just where tracks run, so the distributional correlation could merely be coincidence.
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