The Pawpaw – A Local Fruit

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green fruits on my windowsill

When’s the last time you tried a new fruit? The last time I did, I think I was probably in a tropical country, or eating something grown in a tropical country. But on Sunday I tried a new fruit from right here in the temperate latitudes.

The pawpaw is the largest native fruit in North America. They’re native to the woodlands of my part of the world – the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. – and I originally learned about them from acquaintances who, like me, grew up around here but, unlike me, paid attention to trees. You can find them growing wild around here but I have no idea what a pawpaw tree looks like. I didn’t get my fruit from a tree. I got it from a special pawpaw table (a “Paw Paw Pop Up”) at the local farmer’s market.

The fruit looks like a mango, but it’s only about as long as a finger. The nice women at the Paw Paw Pop Up instructed me to cut it in half, then scoop out the flesh, while avoiding the seeds. Avoiding the seeds wouldn’t be hard, she assured me.

The pawpaw mentioned in the Jungle Book, which I know of only because a neighbor recited it to me when I walked into the front lobby with my bag of pawpaws, is not the same thing – it turns out that some people use the word “pawpaw” to refer to papaya. Pawpaw is not papaya. It’s in the Annonaceae family, which is mostly tropical and includes the soursop. The whole group is known as the custard-apple family. The custard-apple is a very promising name for a plant. My neighbor had just tried some herself and was considering going back to the market to buy more.

Upstairs in my apartment I picked the softest, squishiest pawpaw and cut it open, a long cut around the middle lengthwise like a mango, and pulled the two halves apart. The inside did look custardy, and the farmer’s market lady was right, I wasn’t going to accidentally eat the coffee-bean-like seeds. I scooped the innards out with a spoon, as instructed, and sucked the fruit off the seeds. The National Park Service says “the flavor of pawpaw fruit is often compared to bananas, but with hints of mango, vanilla, and citrus.” The first one I ate mostly tasted sweet and delicious. The second and third I’m calling pineapple custard. The others are still ripening on my counter.

It was a new fruit to me, but the pawpaw has been right here all along. The Park Service’s Pawpaw website says that the pawpaw is the most common sapling in the region’s forests, and it’s particularly common in places where I don’t usually go looking for food, like the George Washington Parkway (an important commuting route into the city) and the C&O Canal. Non-human animals love the fruits, too, although deer won’t eat the foliage, which (the Park Service says) may be part of the reason why it’s been expanding its range. The pawpaw has been getting more attention lately. My local public radio station did a story on it during pawpaw season last year.

The pawpaw never hit it big because, unlike the world-dominating apple or banana, it can’t be transported or stored. Unless a clever fruit breeding program somewhere changes that, it’s going to continue being a sweet September treat for those of us lucky enough to live in its range.

Photo: Helen Fields

3 thoughts on “The Pawpaw – A Local Fruit

  1. This sounds just like the pineapple guava (also called the feijoa in Mexico). We have two trees of it in our backyard and had NO IDEA that the fruit was edible until a guy working on our kitchen remodel saw them while eating his lunch and asked if he could harvest some.

    It turns out they are delicious, but only for one day. The kiwi-sized fruit often does not ripen if you pick it. You have to wait for it to fall off the tree, then it is ripe for a little less than 48 hours. Cut it open, scoop out the insides, and enjoy. The ripe ones are smooth and custardy. The over-ripe ones have the hint of what they used to be. The not-yet ripe ones would convince you never to try one again.

    You’ll never see them in the store because they don’t transport well.

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