It's almost pawpaw season!

it's almost pawpaw fruit season here in Arklahoma

Another wonderful fruit. We have young pawpaw trees in our woods understory but no fruit on them...I don't know if they are too young or too shaded...We were given some fruit two years ago and planted the seeds under our elderberries but no sign of them. What do you know about the places they like to live?....and how to get the seeds to sprout?

from what i have heard, pawpaws require a specific pollinators, either a type of fly that lives near rivers and streams or a human and a paint brush, for hand pollination. a farmer near Eureka Springs, AR, who grows pawpaws for their medicinal leaves and stems told me that pawpaws prefer sandy, nutrient rich fields near streams which flood annually are ideal for pawpaws. pawpaws will spread through their roots, creating large stands of trees, but the trees resent being transplanted. in other words, it is advised to plant a seed rather than try to transplant an offshoot. about sprouting pawpaw seeds, the only seeds that managed to sprout for me were ones that had been tossed into the compost pile a year after my initial planting. so perhaps there is a long sprouting wait time/ and / or the heat from the compost helped germination.

Thanks for the advice...it's been two years since I planted seed and of course I didn't mark the places, just under the elderberries but I don't see anything that looks like a pawpaw leaf. I haven't been off of our bluff to where the old pawpaws trees are all summer...I wonder if they survived the drought. Unless I put them around some grey water near the house we are probably too dry for the trees to bear fruit.
What are the leaves good for besides as an "insecticide"... do you know what insects? and as a diuretic (I just did a quick look in my peterson guide for mediciinal plants) Maybe I have a useful medicinal even if it never fruits.