The Pawpaws of Pittsburgh

An American tropical fruit that no one's heard of

I took the winding path down into the gully and then followed the dotted line that Gabrielle had drawn on the map. I left the trail and walked through a muddy field collecting well over a hundred tiny burs on my sneakers as I went. I referenced the map again and was about to to turn back – figuring I must have taken the turn preemptively – when I saw the familiar leaves. There it was. A massive grove of pawpaw trees in one of Pittsburgh’s city parks. I walked to the center of the patch and looked up at the sun-dappled canopy. Gabrielle had warned me that this was a well known pawpaw patch and she was right – I couldn’t find one piece of fruit on the trees despite this being pawpaw season.

When I first heard about Pittsburgh’s native pawpaw tree, I thought I must have heard wrong. I was surprised to learn that there’s a tropical-sounding (and tasting) fruit that grows right here in Western Pennsylvania. I’d never seen a pawpaw while growing up in Oregon which makes sense as they’re native to the eastern United States. The fruit belongs to the tropical and subtropical Annonaceae plant family that encompasses well over a thousand species but the pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is the only variety that grows this far north.

Though they grow across the region, few people seem to know about the pawpaw. That might have something to do with their incredibly short shelf life which makes it tricky for them to be sold in grocery stores. The apple and bananas we buy in stores have to be shipped, trucked and probably passed through various distribution centers before arriving in a produce section. By then, any pawpaw would probably be half rotten.

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Indigenous folks and early European settlers were very familiar with the fruit. There are at least half a dozen towns named Pawpaw in the east and midwest where groves of trees probably once grew along a river or creek. There’s even an old American folk song about picking pawpaws.

I hadn’t eaten a pawpaw in a few years and I was lucky enough to taste a few this year. My friend Ben dropped off a couple that he had found at the East End Food Coop. And though Gabrielle’s first pawpaw lead hadn’t panned out, she told me that said she knew of another patch – one that was so secret she wouldn’t even tell me where it was – but she promised to bring me a few of the fruit from her harvest. Like honeycrisp or gala or granny smith apples, pawpaws from different trees can taste dramatically different and that’s part of the fun. To me the pawpaw tastes sort of like a cross between mango, banana and cantaloupe. But some pawpaws also have vanilla or custard notes and occasionally a pawpaw will have a bitter tang that hits your tongue just before you swallow.

Earlier this month, in the middle of pawpaw season, I chatted with Gabrielle about the unique fruit on KDKA’s Talk Pittsburgh. Gabrielle also told me about research she’s been doing related to a pawpaw-loving pollinator. Like the relationship between milkweed and monarch butterflies, pawpaws are a host plant for the zebra swallowtail butterfly. Gabrielle explained that Pittsburgh’s pawpaws practically vanished as steel and other industries took over the riverside areas where the trees were growing. Without pawpaw trees to lay their eggs on, the zebra swallowtail butterflies also disappeared from the area. They’ve barely been seen in the last century. But this summer Gabrielle made a promising discovery. You can watch the whole segment here:

Have you ever eaten a pawpaw? What do you think it tastes like?

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And one more thing: If you’re looking to learn more about pawpaws I highly recommend Andrew Moore’s book, Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit. It’s a wonderfully written book that dives into the fruit’s history and introduces you to a range of characters who are trying to introduce the pawpaw to more palates.

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