Pawpaws: America's Forgotten Fruit
Pawpaws (Asimina triloba) are the largest edible, native fruit of the USA. They are green on the outside, oval-shaped, and bright yellow flesh on the inside. They taste tropical and sweet like a cross with banana and mango and vanilla with a custard-like texture. They can be found as far north as Ontario and typically grow in the understory of temperate woodlands. So how is it that most of us have never even heard of them? Well, therein lies a fascinating story.
Pawpaws are unusual. They are ancient... coming to us from the time of mastodons, mammoths and ground sloths! Pawpaws look tropical, yet they need cool winters to grow. They are hardy to zone 4 (about -25 degrees!) making it possible for them to grow in several colder states outside their current range, though they do need a full 160 warm days to properly ripen fruit. The current range for the pawpaw is just south of New England, north of Florida and as far west as Nebraska with some intrepid individual reaching much farther north to Michigan or even Ontario in Canada. They used to be everywhere throughout their range, and even played important roles in history as a food source for indigenous peoples (who knew the fruit so well including how to process it in ways that still have eluded modern plant breeders and growers) and for explorers including the Lewis and Clark Expedition. There are pawpaw trees growing quietly, unrecognized at Monticello alongside Jefferson's famous gardens. They were important food sources for enslaved African Americans traveling north and surviving in the south. Towns and cities throughout the pawpaw's range are named after the fruit and folk songs and poetry still contain references to these unusual fruits. So what happened?
Apparently back at the turn of the twentieth century, there were a LOT of people interested in pawpaws and in breeding them. It was at a time when blueberries were also being singled out for breeding programs to make them more commercially viable. The same level of interest was being given to pawpaws, and a contest was even launched by the Journal of Heredity in 1916 seeking out top quality pawpaws to be send in with a prize for the winner. Out of this incredible inventory, top pawpaw varieties were selected. There were several people who emerged at this time as champions for the breeding of the pawpaw...
... and then, in a weird twist of events, the momentum with the breeding of pawpaws and all the work that went into collecting top species, disappeared. For instance, one lead researcher died quite unexpectedly and with him, his years of research on pawpaws. Field trials of trees got overgrown and neglected. The pawpaw, for reasons not entirely known, also became less common in our woodlands (though habitat loss, pollination issues, and land development all play a role). What happened for a tree that has been around for 10,000 years to suddenly fade out of forests and our cultural knowledge?
It wasn't until 1975 that pawpaws came back into the research world when a young plant breeder named Neal Peterson came along and tried his first pawpaw. He'd known about the trees growing in the woods but despite being a forager, could not remember ever trying one. That first taste of the amazing tropical-custard-like flavor blew him away! Why had no one tried to breed these before? He did the research and found the story of pawpaws, their important role in history and place in North American forests bizarre and compelling... and mysterious. He did some digging to find old properties that still had remnants of leftover pawpaw variety trials from the contest back in 1916... long story short, he found them! After several unexpected setbacks in establishing his own farm, he helped propel pawpaw breeding forward, giving these bizarre fruits the momentum and enthusiasm they needed to once again capture national attention.
For a full inspiring account of the AMAZING story of pawpaws, including Neal Peterson's journey, check out Andrew Moore's awesome book called Pawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit. It's a page-turning read that details the challenges of finding these lost pawpaws and the hope (and challenge!) of bringing them back into American culture. To make a long story short, pawpaws are growing again in popularity. There's even a National Pawpaw Day (third Thursday in September)! There are now pawpaw beers (which are super tasty!), pawpaw kombucha, pawpaw ice cream, pawpaw fruit juice, and local specialty grocers even sometimes sell pawpaws fruit in season or frozen. Yet they are still far from being a mainstay fruit in markets or a tree in our forests... The new interest in pawpaws has, however, inspired events and tastings and farmers around the country including the ever-growing yearly Pawpaw Festival in Ohio attended by thousands of many pawpaw enthusiasts from around the country.
Spring is an excellent time to spot the pawpaw tree's weird dark red flowers. These flowers do not attract bees (weird!), but beetles and flies that do the majority of the pollinating. In order to form fruit, pawpaw flowers require a second tree and pollen from another, genetically different pawpaw to fully pollinate.
The trees have a distinctive pyramidal shape with gray bark. If you happen to see a Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly flittering around in summer... then know there are pawpaws nearby! Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars only eat pawpaw leaves... so keep an eye out!
Where there are Zebra Swallowtails, there are pawpaws...
Growing Your Own: Buy plants from known varieties or grow wild pawpaws from seed. You can choose to have these bear fruit or graph on varieties in future. The seeds must be kept moist. They may not germinate if they dry out. Collect seeds ripe fruit in fall. A good way to maintain moisture is to put them in the refrigerator in a plastic ziplock with moist potting soil. Pawpaw seeds take A LONG time to germinate and prefer to do so in the shade... too much sun can kill young seedlings. They first develop a long, brittle taproot long before the first leaves emerge aboveground.
For more on cultivating pawpaws, check out For the Love of Pawpaws: A Mini Manual for Growing and Caring for Pawpaws from Seed to Table by Michael Judd
Planting pawpaw seeds
Resources:
"Pawpaws: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit" by Andrew Moore
Peterson Pawpaws and where to buy fruit or tree (caution: they are hard to find in stock!): https://www.petersonpawpaws.com/
Zebra Swallowtail and Pawpaws: https://vnps.org/paw-paws-and-the-zebra-swallowtail-butterfly/
National Pawpaw Day - third Thursday in September
Pawpaw Festival in Ohio
For the Love of Pawpaws: A Mini Manual for Growing and Caring for Pawpaws from Seed to Table by Michael Judd