The Last Word On Nothing

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