pawpaw (asimina triloba)

pawpaw is a botanical improbability: a cold-hardy deciduous tree of eastern north american forests that looks, smells, and fruits like something out of the tropics. it belongs to the custard-apple family, annonaceae, a lineage better known for tropical fruits such as cherimoya and soursop. pawpaw carries that ancestry into the temperate forest, with enormous drooping leaves, strange wine-red flowers, and clusters of green fruit filled with soft, intensely aromatic flesh. its native range reaches as far north as western new york and southern ontario.

the fruit is the main attraction. pawpaws produce the largest edible fruit of any native north american tree, with a creamy, custard-like texture and a flavor variously compared to banana, mango, pineapple, vanilla, and citrus. ripe fruit can be eaten fresh or turned into ice cream, preserves, drinks, and desserts. it is also famously perishable, which is part of the reason this extraordinary native fruit remains something you are far more likely to encounter beneath a tree than in a supermarket.

our pawpaws are seed-grown from two unusually northern sources: burlington, vermont and central new york. both populations have already survived a winter outdoors at our nursery in southern maine, and we are growing them on for another season before offering them for sale. these are not named cultivars, and we don’t promise that every seedling will behave identically. quite the opposite: they are genetically variable northern seedlings that we are interested in growing, observing, and selecting from as pawpaw is pushed farther into northern new england.

pawpaws are slow creatures when young. the seed requires a long period of cold, moist stratification, germination itself is slow, and young seedlings can spend an almost insulting amount of time looking tiny aboveground. this is not a catalpa. patience is part of the crop. once established, however, pawpaw develops into a substantial small tree, commonly around 20–30 feet tall, sometimes larger, with leaves that can approach a foot in length and give the tree an unmistakably lush, almost tropical appearance. in autumn the foliage turns clear yellow.

in the wild, pawpaw is a tree of rich deciduous woods: ravines, stream corridors, floodplains, and deep, moist soils. it tolerates considerable shade and often occupies the understory, spreading from its roots to form patches and colonies. a wild “pawpaw patch” may therefore be many trunks but only one genetic individual. given more light in cultivation, pawpaw generally grows and fruits more heavily, although young plants appreciate some protection while becoming established.

its flowers are almost as strange as its fruit. instead of advertising themselves to bees with bright petals and nectar-guide colors, pawpaw flowers are dark maroon to purplish brown, slightly funky smelling, and associated primarily with flies and beetles as pollinators.

pawpaw also has one of the more memorable insect relationships among eastern fruit trees. its foliage is the larval host of the zebra swallowtail, a spectacular black-and-white butterfly whose range is closely tied to the presence of pawpaw. the leaves contain defensive chemistry that discourages many other herbivores, while zebra swallowtail caterpillars are adapted to feed on them. meanwhile the ripe fruit is eaten by an assortment of mammals including raccoons, foxes, squirrels, opossums, and bears.

plant pawpaw in reasonably rich, moisture-retentive but well-drained soil. young trees are well suited to partial shade or temporary protection from intense exposure, while established trees can be grown with considerably more sun where fruit production is the goal. avoid extremely dry sites. and if you want fruit, plant several genetically distinct trees near enough to exchange pollen—the unusual pollinating insects involved are not always particularly efficient travelers.

for us, pawpaw belongs squarely in the northern food forest: a beautiful native understory tree, an ecological curiosity, a host for one of our strangest butterflies, and a source of fruit that seems profoundly out of place beneath a new england canopy. our northern seedling populations are an experiment in just how comfortably that tropical-looking tree can be pushed toward maine.