Although people might have heard of pawpaws, few of them know what a pawpaw is. When we first moved to the Ozarks, we didn’t know anything about the amazing pawpaw.
The Patch
Along a pasture fence was a patch of these strange trees. Their huge leaves had a tropical look to them. Their purple flowers opened upside down in the spring, but there was no fruit.
Down along the river were some other patches of these trees we identified as pawpaws. These had a few fruits, if you can call green potatoes fruits.
When these ripened in late summer we tried eating them. The next year we gathered pollen from the river trees for out pasture trees. Now these had fruits on them.
Pawpaw Facts
These semi tropical trees are a native fruit probably from Florida or the Gulf Coast. Indians liked them, eating the fruit and using the inner bark as fiber. They spread the trees all through the eastern U.S.
Pawpaws are an understory tree near, but not in, water as in ravines or along creeks. With their large leaves, they can and do grow straight even growing in the shade. They prefer growing in the shade. When they like a spot, they put up sprouts around them and become a patch.
In the spring the flowers open facing the ground. They attract flies and beetles as pollinators. There must be two different trees, not another sprout, for pollination.
Fruits
The clusters of green potatoes soften and take on a yellow tinge in late summer to early fall. Usually there are three or four fruits in a cluster. This year we have an amazing pawpaw cluster of twelve!
We pick the fruits as soon as they soften. They ripen on the windowsill. Once they are soft, we can eat the custardy insides discarding the large seeds. If any are left over, they make great sweet breads.
Those left on the trees are soon chewed on. We aren’t the only ones who like the sweet, custardy fruits. Deer, raccoons, opossums, foxes and others like them too.