Pawpaws: Why Is the Most American Fruit So Hard to Buy?
October 6, 2022 11:19 AM Subscribe
By the time I arrived at Brooklyn’s Park Slope farmers’ market in search of a pawpaw one morning last week, it was already too late: The weird green fruit had sold out within an hour. (SL The Atlantic - archived)
Previously.
My pawpaw story: about 20 years again I planted two trees in my yard in Seattle. After a couple years (and no fruit) and realizing my yard was too small for them, a friend successfully transplanted them to their yard. It took them six years to fruit. They were delicious. But they never had fruit again, and the trees had to be later removed for a construction project.
posted by ShooBoo at 11:32 AM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
My pawpaw story: about 20 years again I planted two trees in my yard in Seattle. After a couple years (and no fruit) and realizing my yard was too small for them, a friend successfully transplanted them to their yard. It took them six years to fruit. They were delicious. But they never had fruit again, and the trees had to be later removed for a construction project.
posted by ShooBoo at 11:32 AM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
The lovely food podcast Gastropod has an episode on the pawpaw that you may enjoy.
posted by cyranix at 11:35 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by cyranix at 11:35 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I am growing a mini orchard of wild type pawpaw trees in my backyard in Missouri. They are still too young to fruit, but they are growing well and I am hoping to have a nice supply of fruit in a couple of years. A nice thing about pawpaws is that, since they are understory trees in their natural habitat, they can be grown in shady conditions that commercial fruit trees wouldn't thrive in. They also don't mind clay soil, and they are relatively deer resistant since the leaves have an unpleasant taste. Over time an individual pawpaw tree can spread into a clonal colony, which means you only need to plant a few to potentially eventually have a large supply of fruit. (You do need to plant at least two genetically distinct plants for cross pollination for ideal fruit production, though.)
Pawpaws are host plants for zebra swallowtail butterflies and sphinx moths and are a good choice to plant for native habitat restoration purposes, if you live in their native range.
posted by BlueJae at 11:41 AM on October 6, 2022 [14 favorites]
Pawpaws are host plants for zebra swallowtail butterflies and sphinx moths and are a good choice to plant for native habitat restoration purposes, if you live in their native range.
posted by BlueJae at 11:41 AM on October 6, 2022 [14 favorites]
That’s amazing, where did you get pawpaw plants in Seattle? I want one!
posted by bq at 11:46 AM on October 6, 2022
posted by bq at 11:46 AM on October 6, 2022
I had my first pawpaw last week! It was nice, if not mindblowing. I think we've planted a baby somewhere, but my wife gardens like a squirrel (she sticks stuff in the ground and then forgets about it, and six months later can't remember where she put it.) Alas, she did not care for the fruit - it had too much of the banana nature, apparently. Not really the vibe I got, but bananas are anathema to her.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:51 AM on October 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad at 11:51 AM on October 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
I was indeed at the NY Pawpaw conference! I've got about 25 pawpaws in my orchard, two of which are bearing fruit.
posted by Walleye at 11:52 AM on October 6, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Walleye at 11:52 AM on October 6, 2022 [8 favorites]
I know google image search is right there, but forgive me for thinking an article about a seldom-encountered food should have more than one image of the damn thing.
And if they're going to have just the one pic, maybe not a macro-closeup that could be mistaken for a custard studded with raisins.
ANYWAYS, this is very fascinating. I love the stories behind how foods recede and return. Thank you!
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:53 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
And if they're going to have just the one pic, maybe not a macro-closeup that could be mistaken for a custard studded with raisins.
ANYWAYS, this is very fascinating. I love the stories behind how foods recede and return. Thank you!
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:53 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
bananas are anathema to her
banathema, surely
posted by cabbage raccoon at 12:06 PM on October 6, 2022 [26 favorites]
banathema, surely
posted by cabbage raccoon at 12:06 PM on October 6, 2022 [26 favorites]
where did you get pawpaw plants in Seattle?
Raintree Nursery does mail order.
posted by ShooBoo at 12:07 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Raintree Nursery does mail order.
posted by ShooBoo at 12:07 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you're somewhere near Brattleboro, VT, they are selling pawpaws at Scott Farm. At least, they were, yesterday.
posted by beagle at 12:15 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by beagle at 12:15 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Having just gotten my box of heirloom apples from them, I was just about to say!
Also, Zingerman's makes a seasonal pawpaw gelato, but you really have to watch for it (and be willing to pay for frozen shipping for a 6-pack of gelato).
posted by praemunire at 12:17 PM on October 6, 2022
Also, Zingerman's makes a seasonal pawpaw gelato, but you really have to watch for it (and be willing to pay for frozen shipping for a 6-pack of gelato).
posted by praemunire at 12:17 PM on October 6, 2022
I grew up on a nature reserve in rural Missouri (about an hour from St. Louis) and every fall my family would try to grab as many as possible before the raccoons got them all. More recently, I harvested enough for a small brewery in the STL area to do a test batch of a PawPaw saison.
I've planted a few PawPaws here in WNC where I live now now and I'm excited to see if I can get some fruit before the bears get to it!
posted by schyler523 at 12:21 PM on October 6, 2022 [5 favorites]
I've planted a few PawPaws here in WNC where I live now now and I'm excited to see if I can get some fruit before the bears get to it!
posted by schyler523 at 12:21 PM on October 6, 2022 [5 favorites]
bq, my family didn’t have great fruiting success w/PNW pawpaw and we suspect they prefer summer humidity. If you have a waterside site, maybe.
posted by clew at 12:27 PM on October 6, 2022
posted by clew at 12:27 PM on October 6, 2022
I've never had a pawpaw and figure my best chance for getting to is to grow some trees and harvest the fruit when they come. I bought 4 pawpaw seedlings this spring for a friend to plant in his yard (he has a couple of acres and is growing many other fruit and nut trees as well. Sadly some animals came and munched the seedlings so those plants are no more. My friend has passed away and I'm not sure if his family will be staying at that place long term so I'll have to figure out an alternate place where I can plant some more seedlings next year. Right now my best hope is stealth planting them in various spaces and hoping that some survive long enough to fruit.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:30 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:30 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
The nursery/farm near me (in the PNW) has a couple of pawpaws in their display bed. It rarely produces much fruit and when it does it doesn't usually ripen. As clew suggests it's the too cool/short summer. For now at least.
posted by sevenless at 12:34 PM on October 6, 2022
posted by sevenless at 12:34 PM on October 6, 2022
WHY IS IT NAMED AFTER MY GRANDFATHER?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:52 PM on October 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:52 PM on October 6, 2022 [7 favorites]
BECAUSE PAWPAWS ARE BAD, THAT'S WHY. (Answering the original question on the OP; I'm sure your own Pawpaw was a delightful person.)
The true most American of fruits, Diospyros virginiana, the American persimmon, is delicious and far more useful than the pawpaw and can apparently be made into what wikipedia describes as "a sort of beer", which doesn't sound that promising honestly but its heartwood is ebony black and the fruit makes a shatteringly delicious baked pudding. The persimmon, like the lychee, has an ineluctable, Proustian-madeleine kind of flavor which can't really be compared to anything else.
I had a fresh pawpaw once on my dad's cousin's farm and it was mushy and weird, frankly.
posted by Frowner at 1:00 PM on October 6, 2022 [8 favorites]
The true most American of fruits, Diospyros virginiana, the American persimmon, is delicious and far more useful than the pawpaw and can apparently be made into what wikipedia describes as "a sort of beer", which doesn't sound that promising honestly but its heartwood is ebony black and the fruit makes a shatteringly delicious baked pudding. The persimmon, like the lychee, has an ineluctable, Proustian-madeleine kind of flavor which can't really be compared to anything else.
I had a fresh pawpaw once on my dad's cousin's farm and it was mushy and weird, frankly.
posted by Frowner at 1:00 PM on October 6, 2022 [8 favorites]
Paw paws really have a small window of fresh-picked ripeness when they are at their best. If you have not tried it from inside that window, you should withhold final judgement on its taste & texture until such grace is visited upon you.
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 1:11 PM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 1:11 PM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Paw Paws seem to be a thing here in Ohio but I have never seen one for sale. It does show up quite a bit in our beers: Jackie O's Paw Paw Wheat and Littlefish's Paw Paw Weizen in Athens, Thirsty Dog's Paw-Paw Saison in Akron and Urban Artifact's Dilophosaurus here in Cincinnati.
posted by mmascolino at 1:29 PM on October 6, 2022
posted by mmascolino at 1:29 PM on October 6, 2022
Yay, pawpaw talk!
For further reading:
From Garden & Gun, by Bill Heavey: The Mad Scientist of Pawpaws: Largely the domain of foragers, the biggest edible fruit in the South has mostly been forgotten. A quietly obsessed Quaker from West Virginia has made it his life’s mission to change that
Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit, by Andrew Moore (with a foreward by the delightful Michael Twitty)
I planted three pawpaw trees seven years ago or so, and last year was the first year they did anything. Pawpaws for a couple of weeks, enough to process the pulp and freeze it for bread. This year? Not so very many. In the summer of 2020, I was fortunate enough to visit the Turkey Hill Nature Preserve in Lancaster County, Pa. The preserve is "renowned for its extensive understory groves of pawpaw trees which produce the United States’ largest native tree fruit," which does not quite do justice to what it's actually like. I was expecting a few tiny pawpaw groves here and there, and was walking up the hillside trail before I realized that they were all around me, and that I was surrounded by the sounds of fat fruit falling with satisfying THUNKS. It was delightful! I picked up a pawpaw and ate it right there (thank goodness I had a spoon and a knife with me), and just kept sampling as I went. The fruit is strangely perfumed; you can smell it entire, without cutting into it. But the taste? Like a Wonka invention, a caramel-banana-vanilla custard. It's studded with seeds about the size of a nickel and I couldn't resist cleaning the seeds of the most pleasing fruit and putting them in a damp paper towel in the barn fridge over the winter. They seemed alright in the spring, so I put them in some seed starter and hoped for the best. Got them in the ground when they got some size on them, and they've been happy so far. It might take years before they bear fruit, but I have done my little bit to preserve the joy of a fresh pawpaw.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:35 PM on October 6, 2022 [12 favorites]
For further reading:
From Garden & Gun, by Bill Heavey: The Mad Scientist of Pawpaws: Largely the domain of foragers, the biggest edible fruit in the South has mostly been forgotten. A quietly obsessed Quaker from West Virginia has made it his life’s mission to change that
Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit, by Andrew Moore (with a foreward by the delightful Michael Twitty)
I planted three pawpaw trees seven years ago or so, and last year was the first year they did anything. Pawpaws for a couple of weeks, enough to process the pulp and freeze it for bread. This year? Not so very many. In the summer of 2020, I was fortunate enough to visit the Turkey Hill Nature Preserve in Lancaster County, Pa. The preserve is "renowned for its extensive understory groves of pawpaw trees which produce the United States’ largest native tree fruit," which does not quite do justice to what it's actually like. I was expecting a few tiny pawpaw groves here and there, and was walking up the hillside trail before I realized that they were all around me, and that I was surrounded by the sounds of fat fruit falling with satisfying THUNKS. It was delightful! I picked up a pawpaw and ate it right there (thank goodness I had a spoon and a knife with me), and just kept sampling as I went. The fruit is strangely perfumed; you can smell it entire, without cutting into it. But the taste? Like a Wonka invention, a caramel-banana-vanilla custard. It's studded with seeds about the size of a nickel and I couldn't resist cleaning the seeds of the most pleasing fruit and putting them in a damp paper towel in the barn fridge over the winter. They seemed alright in the spring, so I put them in some seed starter and hoped for the best. Got them in the ground when they got some size on them, and they've been happy so far. It might take years before they bear fruit, but I have done my little bit to preserve the joy of a fresh pawpaw.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:35 PM on October 6, 2022 [12 favorites]
The true most American of fruits, Diospyros virginiana, the American persimmon, is delicious and far more useful than the pawpaw
Frowner, I had a bumper crop of persimmons last year and persimmon bread has been a huge hit. It is a delicious fruit, but oh my God, does it take work to get rid of the cottonmouth of eating an unripe persimmon. UGH. It's on my list tomorrow to gather some up and see how much puree I can process and freeze. It's a different beast than the pawpaw, more like a gingerbread-citrus blend than a caramel-banana. But like the pawpaw, the ripe fruit has fallen; picked fruit is a crapshoot.
Wayback Machine link for your NYT article (thanks, Frowner!): Sun-Dried Persimmons Are Worth the Obsession
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:45 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Frowner, I had a bumper crop of persimmons last year and persimmon bread has been a huge hit. It is a delicious fruit, but oh my God, does it take work to get rid of the cottonmouth of eating an unripe persimmon. UGH. It's on my list tomorrow to gather some up and see how much puree I can process and freeze. It's a different beast than the pawpaw, more like a gingerbread-citrus blend than a caramel-banana. But like the pawpaw, the ripe fruit has fallen; picked fruit is a crapshoot.
Wayback Machine link for your NYT article (thanks, Frowner!): Sun-Dried Persimmons Are Worth the Obsession
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:45 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
We have a pawpaw orchard in nearby Cary, NC, and there are definitely farmers growing pawpaws here, but my attempt to source some from the local co-op market was a whole mess of failing. They had ~40 for all of 12 hours.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 2:10 PM on October 6, 2022
posted by SoundInhabitant at 2:10 PM on October 6, 2022
Only know of Pawpaws from the song.
Had some kind of Persimmon tree, (there are two major types IIRC, and ours was the less desirable type), here in Seattle. Had some fruit, but didn't do much with them.
posted by Windopaene at 3:59 PM on October 6, 2022
Had some kind of Persimmon tree, (there are two major types IIRC, and ours was the less desirable type), here in Seattle. Had some fruit, but didn't do much with them.
posted by Windopaene at 3:59 PM on October 6, 2022
Yeah, going somewhere to BUY paw-paws seems anathema to the whole concept of what a paw-paw is.
If I'm hankering after some delicious paw-paw goodness, I'll just like go wandering around in the woods (or even just around town) for a while at the right time of year until I find one, and there you are.
posted by flug at 8:25 PM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
If I'm hankering after some delicious paw-paw goodness, I'll just like go wandering around in the woods (or even just around town) for a while at the right time of year until I find one, and there you are.
posted by flug at 8:25 PM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Does anyone else think of that This American Life episode?
posted by wotsac at 8:45 PM on October 6, 2022
posted by wotsac at 8:45 PM on October 6, 2022
Both pawpaws and American persimmons (which are distinct from the Asian persimmons sold in the grocery store) are considered anachronistic fruits whose main dispersers were large Pleistocene mammals. Smaller mammals' digestive tracts seem to damage ingested seeds, and so the trees' numbers are limited and their apparent dispersion is often just lateral growth off of old stumps. However, there is evidence that as coyotes expand their range eastward, taking the place of the wolves we drove extinct, they may be taking over as dispersers of persimmon.
posted by hydropsyche at 8:12 AM on October 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 8:12 AM on October 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
The National Park Service surveyed their forests in the Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia region.
Pawpaw: Small Tree, Big Impact
From the article:
In recent decades, naturalists have noted the expansion of pawpaw from well-drained, lowland habitats into drier, upland forests. This phenomenon appears to be driven, at least in part, by patterns of deer browse. Deer find pawpaw foliage unpalatable and, therefore, avoid browsing pawpaw seedlings and saplings. Instead, they preferentially browse species such as spicebush (Lindera benzoin), oaks (Quercus spp.), red maple (Acer rubrum), and blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica). Deer avoidance of pawpaw is evident in NCRN forest data. Out of 2,480 saplings recorded in the most recent sampling period, 27% showed signs of deer browse. The browse rate is strikingly different for pawpaw (which represents 21% of all saplings) with less than 1% showing signs of deer browse and greater than 99% being browse-free!
posted by jjj606 at 6:56 PM on October 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Pawpaw: Small Tree, Big Impact
From the article:
In recent decades, naturalists have noted the expansion of pawpaw from well-drained, lowland habitats into drier, upland forests. This phenomenon appears to be driven, at least in part, by patterns of deer browse. Deer find pawpaw foliage unpalatable and, therefore, avoid browsing pawpaw seedlings and saplings. Instead, they preferentially browse species such as spicebush (Lindera benzoin), oaks (Quercus spp.), red maple (Acer rubrum), and blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica). Deer avoidance of pawpaw is evident in NCRN forest data. Out of 2,480 saplings recorded in the most recent sampling period, 27% showed signs of deer browse. The browse rate is strikingly different for pawpaw (which represents 21% of all saplings) with less than 1% showing signs of deer browse and greater than 99% being browse-free!
posted by jjj606 at 6:56 PM on October 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
I live in Paw Paw, MI and we have 10-15 trees. Four years ago we bought some other types of Paw Paw trees to encourage cross pollination. Hopefully we will have better fruit production in a year or two. We did get five fruits this year, which is exciting!
posted by toddforbid at 8:01 AM on October 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by toddforbid at 8:01 AM on October 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
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