grown in its native environment without pesticides. The commercial cultivation and harvesting of pawpaws is strong in southeastern Ohio and also being explored in Kentucky and Maryland, as well as various areas outside the species' native range, including California, the Pacific Northwest, and Massachusetts. The pawpaw is used for landscaping due to its distinctive growth habit, the appeal of its fresh fruit, and its relatively low maintenance needs once established. Propagation Trees are easily grown from seed. Seeds should not be permitted to dry, as they lose viability if they dehydrate to 5% moisture. The seeds need to be stratified by moist cold storage for 60–100 days at (some publications suggest 90–120 days). They will lose their viability if stored for 3 years or more; some seeds survive if stored for 2 years. Germination is hypogeal and cotyledons remain within the seed coat. Strictly speaking, hypogeal means the cotyledons stay in the soil, acting as a food store for the seedling until the plumule emerges from the soil on the epicotyl or true stem. Because the large seeds contain enough energy to produce a long taproot prior to seeking photosynthetic opportunities above ground, the seed itself will be pushed upward and into the air if germinated in standard pots. (See photo at right.) Propagation using cuttings has generally not been successful. Desirable cultivars are propagated by chip budding or whip grafting onto a root stock. Pawpaw seeds do not grow "true to type" — each individual seed in a fruit is genetically different from the others and from its parent tree. Purchased cultivars do not produce seeds true to type, either, which is why cultivars are all grafted trees. Root sucker seedlings, however, are all genetically identical to their host. Commercial nurseries usually ship seedlings in containers, usually grafted cultivars, but other nurseries such as the Kentucky Division of Forestry ship bareroot seedlings for reforestation projects and area homeowners. Harvesting seedlings from the forest floor is tricky because most forest-floor seedlings are actually root suckers with few roots, and those seedlings that did grow from a seed have deep taproots. Cultivars Over the years, many cultivars of A. triloba have been developed or discovered. Many have been lost and are no longer available commercially. The named varieties producing large fruit and performing well in Kentucky per research trials are 'NC-1', 'Overleese', 'Potomac', 'Shenandoah', 'Sunflower', 'Susquehanna', 'Wabash', KSU-'Atwood', KSU-'Benson', and KSU-'Chappell'.