Pawpaws
Custard Apples of the Eastern Forest
by Nancy Stranahan
Watching autumn unfold is like watching a long, colorful sunset. Although you can pick that one perfect moment when the spectacle is at its absolute peak of light-drenched color, you can nevertheless comfort yourself with the knowledge that much beauty lies ahead, even if belonging to a different and ever-diminishing order. As the bold pageantry fades, the colors that remain are all the more evocative, growing ever deeper and moodier, until the last golden light blinks out like a glowing ember—heralding night, or in the case of seasons, winter.
So rolled the thoughts in my mind as I walked along the Cedar Run Trail on Sunday, October 19, 2009 -- the day I officially declared that autumn had reached its absolute zenith here at the Highlands Nature Sanctuary in southern Ohio. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was so angled that it poured into the deep vertical gorge of Cedar Run, bathing a stand of tulip poplars in a glow of golden light. The tulip poplar leaves positively blazed against the contrasting dark canyon walls. As I gazed upward in admiration, a sudden stiff wind blew up the canyon. The trees exploded in its wake, filling the canyon air with thousands and thousands of swirling, drifting, dancing golden leaves. My soul leapt to meet them. It was one of those magic days.
As I continued down the trail I was soon presented with an unexpected gift. There on the ground, nestled in a bed of fallen leaves, were three immense pawpaw fruits - each weighing well over a half pound. I couldn’t believe my good fortune! Although pawpaws are abundant understory trees throughout the Eastern Forest, their fruits are much rarer than one would expect. They bloom profusely enough in the spring with large, strange, thick-petaled purple flowers, yet few are successfully pollinated by the sap beetles (Nitidulidae) attracted to their rotting-fruit scent. I wonder if some of the flowers might even end up aborting, because it seems that only the trees that catch an hour or two of direct sunlight dependably bear fruit. Being slender and small in stature, few pawpaws achieve such a day in the sun. Requiring the high moisture and wind protection that taller trees provide, it usually takes a literal windfall in the upper canopy to let in just the right amount of sunlight to nurture a pawpaw to harvest. If pawpaw fruits are uncommon, spying a solitary pawpaw sapling is a rarer sight yet. Pawpaws are usually found growing in clones, their colonies propagated by root sprouts rather than seeds.
The pawpaw fruit lying in the leaves before me were immense specimens, fully 4-5 inches each in length, softly gleaming, sweetly pungent, moist, firm and plump. The soft tender skin of pawpaws have a proclivity toward turning black at the slightest bruise or scratch, but these handsome specimens – lying just inches away from each other - were completely unblemished. Apparently the new carpet of fallen leaves had softened their heavy descent. It was almost as if a woodland sprite had picked them just an hour before my approach, and then gently laid them among the leaves to await my discovery - a sylvan offering of autumn bounty.
Our native pawpaw, scientifically known as Asimina triloba, is a member of Annonaceae, the custard apple family. Worldwide, the custard apple family is extremely large in size – boasting 130 genera and up to 2500 species, nearly all of them subtropical and tropical in distribution. Only a few members of the family are recognized as having cultural value. Ylang-ylang, soursop and the actual custard apple are among them. Remarkably - in this vast and diverse group of plants - only one member, our Asimina triloba — can claim complete victory over the rigors of a temperate climate.
Among the world’s many custard apple genera, Asimina is distinctly North American in its distribution. Six of the existing seven Asimina species found in the United States live in the warm climates of our country’s Southeast. Several of them have specifically adapted to the sunny pine savanna ecosystems of southern Georgia and Florida, and have even gained the regeneration ability to bounce back after frequent cycles of fire that burn them right to the ground. However, only A. triloba of the Asimina tribe has managed to enter the temperate broadleaf forest community proper, successfully ranging from northern Georgia all the way to southern Michigan. And only Asimina triloba can boast of a fruit that actually tastes good!
It seems that most of North America’s Asimina species, including our own pawpaw, have traveled far from what was likely to have been their classic tropical forest beginnings. Yet they still carry the smooth-margined, drip-tip, elongate leaves that often reveal tropical origins. How our native pawpaw tree ever adapted to frigid snowy winters remains one of North America’s evolutionary mysteries. There is nothing equivalent to the pawpaw tree anywhere else in the temperate world.
North America’s eastern forest is known world-wide for its flamboyant fall colors, and to this grand show the pawpaw makes a major contribution. Late in the autumn season, after the tall upper-canopy trees lose their foliage, the long drooping leaves of pawpaws turn a memorable shade of faded yellow, brightening up the understory with bleached golds during the last gasp of fall. This is such a distinctive Eastern Forest “look,” that it quickly confirms to the botanically-literate traveler where he is standing on the globe.
On the day of my October walk, however, the pawpaw leaves were still green, and nearly flawless in constitution. Natural insecticides in the leaves and twigs had protected the leaves all summer from deer and insect browsers. If you tear a pawpaw leaf in your hand, and a fragrance will arise that will remind you a bit of raw green peppers, except much less savory in flavor. One of the few insects adapted to pawpaws’ chemical armory is the stunning Zebra Swallowtail. As a caterpillar, this species is a pawpaw specialist. As an adult, it is commonly seen in spring and summers floating softly through large tracts of undisturbed eastern forests and forest openings, its long wing-tails draped gracefully behind it. If it weren’t for pawpaws, this beautiful insect would likely not be here to grace our woods. Interestingly, according to Professor David Johnson, an Annonaceae expert from Ohio Wesleyan, the "kite swallowtail" group of butterflies to which the Zebras belong apparently depend on Annonanceae as host plants all over the tropics as well.
Pawpaw is a host plant of the Zebra
Swallowtail butterfly.
Reverently, I went down on my knees and lifted a heavy pawpaw fruit in my hands. How often does one find a perfect pawpaw? When the fruit is green, it puckers your mouth like acrid powder. When ripe, it rapidly ferments into an alcoholic mash. For the seemingly "few hours" they are just right, the possums and raccoons usually get to them first, often discovering them within hours of their fall from the tree. Most of the time, the only pawpaws I see in the woods are what’s left after a midnight feast: a discarded pile of giant brown seeds, each hard seed bigger than a penny and uncomfortably over-sized for our current mammals to swallow and excrete -- though it does happen. What giant herbivore might have co-evolved with pawpaws to be able swallow some of the seeds whole - without even noticing - and leave them in a pile of dung to nurture a new generation? A mammoth? A giant sloth or ancient tapir? Or maybe a mobile primate that could be counted on to carry the succulent fruit far from the parent tree? Whatever or whoever the pawpaw original distributor was, I decided it must have gone the way of its primary pollinators. “Maybe it is I,” I thought with a self-important rush, “Maybe it is I, as a representative homo sapiens, who can now claim primary synergy with the tree. Maybe my simple human deeds can aid the pawpaw!”
"One thing for sure, this pawpaw fruit seems to have been made just for me." I inhaled the sweet fruity fragrance with deep satisfaction. Could I be so fortunate to have found these fruits in perfect condition? Not too hard? Not too soft? Lustily, I ate one on the spot. Then, I took off my socks and put one hefty fruit into each one so I could carry my
swinging bounties home without bruising their perfect complexions. That night for dinner, with careful ritual I cut each pawpaw in half, placed them in four custard dishes, and cradled them with small bronze spoons.
Then, closing my eyes, I picked up one of the cups, scooped out a mound of sweet flesh and brought it to my mouth. Ohhh, the sweetness of ripe banana, the sunny fruitiness of mango, the soft juiciness of melon, the curdled texture of rich cream custard. Ecstasy! It melted in my mouth. In the ten seconds of swoon that followed, countless prayers flew unheeded from my soul - ballads to the Transcendent Fruit of the One Forest, praises to the Goddess of 10,000 Manifestations, homage to the holy forces of pawpaw evolution, and odes to extinct mammoths. When I was finished with the meal, I carried out my duty to the greater Community of Life. I took the remaining pile of pawpaw seeds and buried them in the closest thing to a manure pile that I had – my kitchen compost heap.
Pawpaws. Long may they prosper.
The author wishes to thank Dr. David Johnson from Ohio Wesleyan who has dedicated much of his life to the study of Annonaceae and in no small way inspired this article. However, any accidental errors herein are solely the responsibility of the author and not Dr. Johnson!