The Pawpaw: Forgotten and Remembered
Emily Ellis
If you didn’t grow up feasting on sweet, creamy pawpaws every September, you might be surprised to find such a tropical-looking plant sprouting in the woodlands of Virginia. Pawpaws are indeed native to North America - in fact, they are the continent’s largest edible indigenous fruit - and their arrival every fall at Oak Spring reminds us that the site is home to one of our region’s most important and fascinating plants.
A pair of almost-ripe pawpaws growing at Oak Spring.
Although they’ve gained more widespread attention in recent years thanks to efforts from farmers, foragers, botanists, chefs and other educators to shed light on indigenous and heritage foods, many folks are unlikely to have tasted a pawpaw. That hasn’t always been the case with this fascinating fruit, which was once one of the most important diet staples for people living in its range.
For centuries, pawpaws were eaten and cultivated by Native Americans up and down the east coast and into the midwest, who likely helped the tree to expand its territory. Both the fruit and other parts of the pawpaw were used in a range of ways by Native peoples. The pawpaw was recorded as central to Algonquian, Siouan, and Osage diets, according to the American Indian Health and Diet Project; the Cherokee used the fibrous interior bark of the tree to make ropes and string, the Iroquois mashed the fruit into dried cakes, and the Shawnee had a “pawpaw month” in their calendar.
The first European mention of pawpaws dates to 1541, when Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto observed Native people in the Mississippi valley growing and eating the fruit. The Spanish were also likely the source of the pawpaw’s common name - probably, due to misidentifying it as a papaya - while the tree’s scientific name (Asimina triloba) comes from the Powhatan word for the fruit, Assimina.
François-André Michaux, The North American Sylva, Paris, 1819
In the centuries that followed, the pawpaw also became an important food for the European settlers and pioneers and enslaved African Americans who lived in its range. In his foreword to Andy Moore’s Pawpaw: The Search for America’s Forgotten Fruit, culinary historian Michael Twitty writes of pawpaws growing outside the dwellings of enslaved people and along the trails that they traveled to reach freedom in northern states, adding that it was an important source of nourishment in a diet built on “nutritional monotony.”
In early America, the pawpaw was often described as a food “fit only for Negroes and Indians,” continued Twitty. While the pawpaw received some mention and praise from prominent 18th and 19th century Americans such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Lewis and Clark expedition members, the fruit never gained much widespread popularity. Its reputation as a food for people of color and poor white folks (it was called “the poor man’s banana” during the Great Depression), coupled with the fruit’s relatively short shelf life and the ready availability of imported tropical fruits in supermarkets, contributed to its exclusion from mainstream culinary history in the 20th century.
Yet the pawpaw lived on in folklore, songs, and stories of those whose communities feasted on the fruit every fall, especially in remote country where other nutritious fruits were hard to come by. The catchy Appalachian folksong “Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch” is still sung in kindergarten classrooms and occasionally sticks in the heads of those who learned it as children; place names from Georgia to Illinois bear the name of the fruit. Other parts of the plant have also played roles in medicine and legend; in Ozark folklore, the wood of the tree was used as protection against witches, and the bark, seeds, and leaves of the plant have been traditionally used for anti-inflammatory purposes. Today, two extracts from the bark – asimicin and trilobacin – are being studied for possible anticancer properties.
Pawpaws are botanically interesting as well as having a rich cultural history, and are one of the many plants featuring in our Fantastic Flora exhibit.
While it used to be that you could only eat pawpaws if you lived near a wild patch, people these days have a few more options, thanks to a renewed interest in native and heirloom foods over the past couple decades. New pawpaw festivals pop up around the country every year, along with orchards that cultivate a range of tasty varieties. Even if you don’t live in a rural area, you might still be able to pick some pawpaws for yourself: some urban orchard and gardening projects, such as the Philadephia Orchard Project, grow pawpaws and have some great tips on how to plant your own trees.
Eating pawpaws is pretty straightforward. They’re delicious sucked or scooped straight out of the skin (some say they taste like a cross between a banana and a mango, but we’ll let you judge for yourself) or made into a puree that can be used in puddings, cheesecakes, ice cream, and other creamy desserts. If you scoop out the custardy flesh and pick out the black seeds, the pulp freezes well for later recipes. Pawpaws also grow easily from seed - they’re naturally pest and disease resistant - so it’s worth trying to grow a few of your own if you live in pawpaw country.
One of Oak Spring’s pawpaw patches.
If you prefer to forage your pawpaws and live in the Virginia area, late August to early October is typically our pawpaw season. The trees tend to grow along woodland edges in the moist soil near streams and rivers; just look for a group of short green trees that look like they belong in the tropics! The palm-sized, bean-shaped fruits are green and darken with age. Pawpaws are meant to be shaken from their branches, not picked, so you know they’re ripe when you give a tree a gentle shake and they tumble to the ground. Feel free to tear through the thin skin right there in the pawpaw patch, and enjoy a creamy bite of American history.
Thanks to Caitlin Etherton and Saskia Poulos for their help with this blogpost!
Banner Image: Mark Catesby, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, London, 1731 -1743.