Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch...

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours walking around Mill Pond Park with the twin goals of collecting leaves to press (for leaf identification/classification with students) and of finding more wildflowers to add to my 2016 list.  After I collected several Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) leaves, I decided on a whim to look around the Pawpaw patch and see if there was any fruit.

In the 10+ years I have been looking at this patch of Pawpaws, only once have I ever found a fruit and that one dropped off without maturing.  The trees flower every year, but never seem to develop fruit, so I held out little hope of finding anything.

Then to my surprise, I found one!  A single fruit, about 1 to 1.5 inches wide and 2.5 to 3 inches long, dangling about a dozen feet up in the air, but there it was in all of its glory.