Time to harvest the pawpaws

It is officially pawpaw season. I found one on the trail floor today in the James River Park System and grabbed a handful off the tree to take home to chill in the refrigerator before cutting them open. What, you have never been on the James River Trail Loop this time of year and caught a whiff […]

August 11, 2011; 6:21 AM • by Phil Riggan

It is officially pawpaw season. I found one on the trail floor today in the James River Park System and grabbed a handful off the tree to take home to chill in the refrigerator before cutting them open.

What, you have never been on the James River Trail Loop this time of year and caught a whiff of a ripe banana smell and wondered what it was? Pawpaw, one of the only two fruit trees native to Virginia (American persimmon is another). Likely brown and smushed into the trail floor. Bikers run over them and get them in their tires, hikers get them all into their shoes. 

Pawpaws only grow in fertile soil near rivers — on distinctive medium size trees. Thus, you are going to find plenty along the trails at the James River, but you’d better hurry, the people that know they are there want them too. If you don’t want to eat them, please don’t waste them — just look at them and know what they are.

I will admit, I’ve only eaten them a couple of times and don’t quite know the right way to indulge. If anyone has good suggestions on how to eat them, recipes or any traditions, please share.

MORE: Read more about the history of pawpaw in Virginia.

From wikipedia:

Pawpaw (Asimina) is a genus of eight species of small trees or shrubs with large simple leaves and large fruit, native to eastern North America. The genus includes the widespread common pawpaw Asimina triloba, which bears the largest edible fruit indigenous to the continent. Pawpaws are native to 26 states of the U.S. and to Ontario in Canada. The common pawpaw is a patch-forming (clonal) understory tree found in well-drained, deep, fertile bottomland and hilly upland habitat. Pawpaws are in the same plant family (Annonaceae) as the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang and soursop; the genus is the only member of that family not confined to the tropics.

August 11, 2011 6:21 AM 0