A couple of weeks ago I was trying to hang a big freaking ladder stand all by myself. I’d nearly punched a hole in my ribs trying to get it across the creek and I narrowly avoided crushing my skull more than once trying to get it upright and into the tree. While resting and rethinking my approach I hear a walnut or some other large nut fall out of tree right behind me. I go to investigate and find this:
Along the river under a canopy of Oaks, Sycamores, and other normal river trees were these scrubby little trees with what appeared to be green potatoes hanging off them. I dug deep into that pitifully shallow well of knowledge from senior year Field Biology class… and guessed that they might be pawpaw trees. I had some vague notion that they had a fantastic fruit that people loved to eat but was too soft to transport or market commercially. I was no where near confident enough in my identification to try eating one but I picked a few, dissected one, and thought I’d do some research when I got home. Here’s what they looked like:
They were greener on the tree but in the few hours it took me to get them home they had turned brownish. On the inside they were bright yellow and soft with fairly large lima bean shaped seeds:
My research included this little tidbit:
The earliest documentation of pawpaws is in the 1541 report of the de Soto expedition, who found Native Americans cultivating it east of the Mississippi River. The Lewis and Clark Expedition depended and sometimes subsisted on pawpaws during their travels. Chilled pawpaw fruit was a favorite dessert of George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson was certainly familiar with it as he planted it at Monticello.
And:
Growers hope that potential medical use will eventually lead to increased market demand from the pharmaceutical industry. The seeds also have insecticidal properties. Some Native American tribes dry and powder them and apply the powder to children’s heads to control lice; specialized shampoos now use compounds from pawpaw for the same purpose. Currently, pawpaw extract is being reviewed as an alternative cancer treatment alongside conventional and approved treatments.
If you are wondering (and I know you are), it tasted like a cross between a banana and a mango with the texture of a very ripe pear. It was very good. Kinda cool huh?
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