Asimina triloba
Asimina triloba, the American pawpaw, is a small deciduous tree of eastern North American forests that bears a fruit with a custard-like texture. Ohio botanist William B. Werthner once wrote that the fruit is sweet and a little puckery, and that "only a boy can eat more than one at a time." Historically, it was a commonly eaten fruit throughout its native range. Today most people have never tasted one. Bruise a pawpaw leaf and it smells like green bell pepper. This documentary asks why a fruit so rewarding rarely reaches the shops. It asks which animals shaped the tree, and why a whole grove can stand without bearing a single fruit. And it asks how a plant that most animals avoid became a target of growers, brewers and restorers of damaged riverbanks.
The Annonaceae, or custard-apple family, holds about 2,200 species in 112 accepted genera. Most of them grow in the tropics of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. It is the single largest family in the order Magnoliales. Asimina is the only genus in the family native to temperate regions, and Asimina triloba reaches farther north than any other member, into southern Ontario.
In the United States the tree is native from New York west to southeastern Nebraska, and south to eastern Texas and the Florida panhandle. People have also grown it successfully in Nova Scotia and in several regions of Europe and Asia. It usually does best in USDA hardiness zones 5 to 8, and a few growers have managed zone 4b with careful site selection. Wild trees favor slightly acidic soil, with a pH of 5.5 to 7.0, in floodplains, along stream banks and in nutrient-rich bottomlands. They also climb gently elevated slopes, helped by a deep-reaching taproot.
A mature pawpaw reaches about 35 feet, rarely 45, with trunks 8 to 12 inches or more across. Its leaves run 10 to 12 inches long and 4 to 5 inches broad, and they cluster at the tips of the branches. The leaves have drip tips, a feature more typical of tropical rainforests than of a temperate range. In autumn the foliage turns a rusty yellow, so pawpaw groves can be spotted from a long distance.
Flowers 1 to 2 inches across open in early spring, at the same time as the new leaves or slightly before them. Each has three sepals and six petals, and the petals darken to a rich red-purple or maroon. The fruit that follows is a berry 2 to 6 inches long, weighing anywhere from 0.7 to 18 ounces. It matures by September or October, and the heavy fruits bend the weak branches downward.
Thirteen species of Asimina grow in North America, and the common pawpaw is the largest and best known. Eleven of the thirteen prefer very warm weather and rarely range north of Florida or coastal Alabama, so they never meet Asimina triloba. Asimina parviflora does overlap with it, though it is smaller in both flower and woody growth. It rarely reaches even a third of a pawpaw's height. Hybrids of the two that have been verified genomically are classified as Asimina piedmontana.
A faint yeasty smell drifts from pawpaw blossoms, and botanists count it among several signs of a beetle pollination syndrome. The petals curve over a downward-pointing flower center, and the bases of the inner petals are fleshy and rich in food. Together these features form a pollination chamber at a depth that only small beetles can reach during the first, female-receptive stage of bloom. The flower then shifts to its male stage after a delay. Beetles get a secure and possibly heat-producing shelter where they can feed and mate. Stigmas are receptive on their arrival, and pollen sheds as they leave. Researchers regard this arrangement as an early form of partnership between plants and insects, still common in the oldest lineages of flowering plants.
Pawpaws are self-incompatible, which means pollen cannot fertilize flowers on the same plant. That rule collides with the tree's habit of growing in clonal patches. A single patch of many stems may produce no fruit at all if every stem is genetically identical. Fruitless pawpaw patches have been documented in Ohio.
The dark maroon color of the petals has inspired a rival idea. In Asimina triloba and Asimina parviflora, it suggests that carrion or dung flies might be the effective pollinators. No scholarly paper has documented such flies doing the work in field observations. Even so, the hypothesis has persuaded some horticultural growers to place carrion in pawpaw orchards at bloom time. Professional papers on the genus warn how hard it is to tell effective pollinators from casual, opportunistic visitors.
In May 2021 a citizen science project in southern Michigan ran a "pawpaw pollinator watch," using natural history observation along with video and photo documentation. Two species of tiny sap beetle, Glischrochilus quadrisignatus and Stelidota geminata, were the most abundant and consistently present insects deep inside the flowers. Both belong to the family Nitidulidae, which Clemson University describes as likely night-flying pollinators of pawpaw. The project also found larvae and adults of Glischrochilus quadrisignatus on the ground-level side of rotting fruit in a Michigan orchard after the harvest.
That discovery matches what is known of pawpaw's relatives, such as the cherimoya. These beetles are not strong fliers, so their whole life cycle must unfold on site. Abundant leaves, rotting fruit and other organic debris under the flowering trees are crucial. Eggs are laid there, the larvae feed on decaying matter, and they then dig down into the soil to pupate through the winter. The adults emerge when flowering begins the following year.
Mastodons, mammoths and giant ground sloths probably carried pawpaw seeds in their dung until humans expanded into North America at the end of the Pleistocene. Biologists conclude that the fruit coevolved with large mammals acting as long-distance seed dispersers. Many plants of the Western Hemisphere share this megafaunal dispersal pattern, because so many large animals went extinct near the end of the glacial episodes. Their fruits are now regarded as evolutionary anachronisms. The seeds are too big for today's fruit eaters to swallow and pass, so the plants are poorly matched to present conditions.
The color of the fruit offers another clue. Wild pawpaws and most cultivars stay green, or turn blotched with brown, at peak ripeness. Mammals other than primates judge ripeness by smell rather than sight, so skin color tells a large mammal nothing. Staying green has an advantage, because photosynthesis can continue while the fruit ripens. Full ripening often happens only after the fruit falls naturally, which points to a strategy aimed at ground-based mammals rather than animals in the branches.
Bears would have kept spreading the seeds in their dung after much of the ice age megafauna disappeared. Humans moving from Asia into North America then carried fruit and seeds by hand and extended the range further. Today gardeners continue that role through horticultural plantings, and wild plantings reach as far north as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Raccoons, gray foxes, opossums and squirrels handle the local movement of seeds.
A pawpaw seed is large enough to power a long taproot before the seedling needs any sunlight above ground. This makes the species well suited to life under bigger trees. It is so shade-adapted that nursery seedlings may fail unless they are shielded from direct sun. Germinating seedlings are extremely sensitive to full sun and need partial shade for their first one or two years.
Shallow, horizontally spreading stems called rhizomes build the patches. Because the stems stay connected, they can share the sugars made in their leaves. Stems that reach sunlight can grow as tall as 30 feet and bear the most fruit. Stems that develop in the shade bend and curve in search of patches of light, and they grow in greater density but at smaller size.
Pawpaws are not the first trees to colonize a disturbed site. Because they tolerate deep shade, they can start from seed beneath mature deciduous trees and spread into a subcanopy patch. In a gap left by a fallen tree, the dense shade of a patch can stop native canopy trees from re-establishing from seed. The pawpaw subcanopy then becomes the forest canopy, at about half the height of the usual canopy. In full sunlight the patch can produce more fruit.
The tree is predominantly a lowland species of moist but well-drained soils, yet it has recently been colonizing drier upland forests. This expansion has been attributed to fewer human-set fires in the forests of the eastern United States. Unlike oaks and pines, pawpaw has no resistance to ground fires, so fewer fires favor it along with American beech and striped maple. Overpopulated deer help as well. They avoid pawpaw and browse the seedlings of most other woody plants, so pawpaws are becoming more abundant locally where deer are dense.
Pawpaw tolerates intense shade even better than striped maple. Its leaves cast heavy shade that chokes out the seedlings and saplings of most canopy species. Native spring herbs are the exception, because they benefit from the late-leafing habit of pawpaw.
Acetogenins, strong-smelling natural toxins, protect the pawpaw from being eaten. Rabbits, deer and goats seldom touch the leaves, twigs or bark, and insects mostly avoid them too. There are exceptions. The larva of the pawpaw sphinx moth feeds on the leaves, and mules have been seen eating them in Maryland.
The zebra swallowtail butterfly, Eurytides marcellus, has turned the chemistry to its advantage. Its larvae feed exclusively on young leaves of pawpaw and other Asimina species, though they rarely occur in great numbers. Trace amounts of acetogenins from the leaves stay in the butterflies throughout their lives, making them unpalatable to birds and other predators. Other insects have adapted too. The larvae of Talponia plummeriana, the pawpaw peduncle borer, live in the flowers, and those of Omphalocera munroei, the asimina webworm, mostly eat leaves. In Connecticut, the spotted wing drosophila and the African fig fly were recorded developing inside pawpaw fruit. For the spotted wing drosophila, it was the first known use of a member of the Annonaceae.
In June 2024 a zebra swallowtail was documented laying eggs on a backyard pawpaw in Pittsburgh. Industrialization and the destruction of river slopes had decimated its host plant there, and the butterfly had not been seen in the city since. A local news editorial called the return after 87 years "a huge success for naturalists, conservationists and native tree lovers." It credited groups including Grow Pittsburgh, Tree Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. A partially citizen-led project had been restoring pawpaw to bring the butterfly back and to restore riparian areas.
Restoration planners value the tree for several reasons. Its liking for wet soil and its dense, well-rooted thickets can protect riverbanks against erosion and runoff. As a native species, it can replace plants once used for erosion control, such as non-native bamboo and Amur honeysuckle, which are now discouraged or prohibited because they are invasive. In southern Michigan, pawpaw was chosen for post-industrial forest restoration as a native competitor against Amur honeysuckle and growing numbers of non-native privet. In Pittsburgh a citizen group has planted pawpaw on river slopes for 15 years. Where large predators are almost absent, pawpaw is one of the few native subcanopy trees whose bark and leaves are too poisonous for deer. The lack of commercial demand for its timber protects such plantings from future harvest.
The genus Asimina exists on only one continent, which gives pawpaw an advantage in an age of global trade. Chestnut and elm have relatives in Europe and Asia, and imported diseases devastated them. Pawpaw has no such exposure, and it has no known disease agents, insects included, that are especially damaging.
NatureServe ranks the species G5, very common, across its whole range. Along the northern edge, political borders change the picture. It is a threatened species in New York and an endangered species in New Jersey. In Ontario it has a rank of S3, vulnerable, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources gives it a general status of "Sensitive" and monitors its populations.
Nineteenth-century American agronomist E. Lewis Sturtevant called pawpaws "a natural custard, too luscious for the relish of most people." Horticulturist Barbara Damrosch says the fruit "looks a bit like mango, but with pale yellow, custardy, spoonable flesh and black, easy-to-remove seeds." The flavor resembles banana, mango and cantaloupe, varying by source and cultivar, and the fruit has more protein than most fruits. Wild fruits ripen from late August to mid-September through most of the range, and about a month later near the northern limit. They are usually eaten raw. Cooks also substitute the pulp for banana in recipes, by volume, and mix it into ice cream, pancakes and other breads.
Kentucky State University publishes a nutrition summary for the pulp. It reports high levels of vitamin C, magnesium, iron, copper and manganese, and a good supply of potassium and several essential amino acids. Pawpaws contain these nutrients in amounts about the same as or greater than those in bananas, apples or oranges.
The plant also carries a warning. Laboratory work isolated annonacin, a neurotoxin, in pawpaw fruit, which led to speculation that it may contribute to atypical parkinsonism. One study reported about 70 micrograms per gram in frozen pulp. A 2015 study cautioned that some standard methods also isolated isomers of the toxins and so inflated the reported concentrations. The populations most at risk are those who eat large amounts of Annonaceae fruit products year-round. Concern has focused on the pulp of tropical fruits on Guadeloupe, Guam and New Caledonia. Researchers are also probing whether the roots of tropical cycad plants native to these islands are the primary cause.
A ripe pawpaw lasts only 2 to 3 days at room temperature, or about a week in the refrigerator. It ripens to the point of fermentation soon after picking, and it bruises easily, so only frozen fruit stores or ships well. That is why pawpaws have not been grown on the scale of apples or peaches. Separating seeds from pulp is still experimental, because any injury to a seed can contaminate the pulp with seed poisons. Even so, commercial production is strongest in southeastern Ohio and is being explored in Kentucky and Maryland. It is also tried in California, the Pacific Northwest and Massachusetts. New York farmers are looking at pawpaw as a new crop because climate change has hurt apples and peaches. Organic growers like a fruit that needs very little pesticide. In a muffin study, blind tasters preferred pawpaw puree over both sugar and apple puree, and some craft brewers use the fruit in sour beers and meads.
A tree takes 7 to 8 years to fruit from seed, and growers are advised to plant at least two genetic varieties for cross-pollination. Seeds lose viability if they dry down to 5 percent moisture. They need 60 to 100 days of moist cold storage, and some publications suggest 90 to 120. Cuttings have generally failed. Seeds do not grow true to type, so named cultivars are propagated by chip budding or whip grafting onto a rootstock. Root suckers, by contrast, are genetically identical to their host.
Since 1990, Kentucky State University has run the only full-time pawpaw research program in the world. It hosts the USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository for Asimina species, and its orchards hold over 1,700 trees. Its program has produced three cultivars, KSU-Atwood, KSU-Benson and KSU-Chappell, aimed at better flavor, higher yields and low seed-to-pulp ratios. Trials in Kentucky also favor 'NC-1', 'Overleese', 'Potomac', 'Shenandoah', 'Sunflower', 'Susquehanna' and 'Wabash'.
The name "pawpaw" was first recorded in print in English in 1598, and it originally meant the giant herb Carica papaya. It still does in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. English speakers settling the temperate Americas met a tree with a similarly aromatic, sweet fruit and borrowed the name. By 1760 it was being applied to Asimina triloba. The word probably descends from the Spanish papaya, which itself probably comes from an Arawakan language. It was once stressed on the second syllable, like papaya, and stress on the first syllable became usual in the 20th century.
The scientific name has its own trail. The genus name Asimina is adapted from a Native American word, probably Miami-Illinois, assimin or rassimin, by way of the French colonial asiminier. A Jamestown settler transcribed a Powhatan word Assimina in 1612 as "wheat plum." The epithet triloba refers to the lobed fruits, which Carl Linnaeus described in his original text as "fructibus trifidus."
Local nicknames mostly compare the fruit to a banana. They include Hoosier banana, prairie banana, West Virginia banana, Kansas banana and the poor man's banana. Others are banango, Quaker delight, hillbilly mango and American custard apple. Pawnee speakers say riwahárikstikuc, Kansa speakers say tózhaⁿ hu, and Choctaw speakers say umbi.
The earliest documented mention of pawpaws comes from the 1541 report of the Spanish de Soto expedition. It describes Native Americans east of the Mississippi River cultivating what some have identified as the pawpaw. The Lewis and Clark Expedition ate pawpaws on its travels, and Thomas Jefferson planted the tree at Monticello. Legend has it that chilled pawpaw was a favorite dessert of George Washington. The fruit faded into obscurity with motor travel and refrigeration, though it keeps a specialty market in places such as southern Ontario.
The tough inner bark has long been made into ropes, fishing nets and mats by Native Americans and Midwest settlers. A basketmaker in Michigan, whose ancestors used black ash, has begun planting pawpaw seeds as a possible fiber replacement while the emerald ash borer destroys that species. The planting lies several hundred miles north of the historic pawpaw range, an example of assisted migration. Pawpaw logs have been used for split-rail fences in Arkansas, and the hard, shiny seeds were sometimes carried as pocket pieces in Ohio. Because of the acetogenins, the leaves, twigs and bark can also be turned into an organic insecticide.
The Paw Paw Tunnel on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland was completed in 1850. It runs 3118 feet and bypasses about 5 miles of the 6-mile Paw Paw Bends of the Potomac River, near the town of Paw Paw, West Virginia. In Michigan, the Paw Paw River and the town of Paw Paw take their names from the trees. Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri each have a community called Paw Paw, and the Missouri town is now empty. The city of Natchitoches, Louisiana, takes its name from the Caddo word Nashitosh, meaning "the paw paw eaters." A traditional folk song portrays gathering fallen pawpaws, and Arty Schronce of the Georgia Department of Agriculture explains that the "pocket" in it is an apron pocket, since the fruit would hardly fit in blue jeans.
John James Audubon painted pawpaw foliage and fruit behind his yellow-billed cuckoo in The Birds of America, published from 1827 to 1838. Edward Edmondson, Jr. painted Still Life with Pawpaws around 1870-1875, and it hangs at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. Ohio named the pawpaw its state native fruit in 2009. Since 1999 the Ohio Pawpaw Growers' Association has sponsored an annual festival at Lake Snowden, near Albany, Ohio. Missouri made it the official state fruit tree in 2019. The third Thursday in September is National Pawpaw Day, announced on the 19th of September 2019 at Kentucky State University. Even the endangered Missouri variety of French is known to outsiders, and to some native speakers, as "Paw-Paw French."
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Common questions
What is Asimina triloba, the American pawpaw?
Asimina triloba is a small deciduous tree native to eastern North America that grows up to about 35 feet tall. It has large leaves and bears a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit with a sweet, custard-like pulp.
Where does the pawpaw tree grow naturally?
The pawpaw is native from New York west to southeastern Nebraska and south to eastern Texas and the Florida panhandle. Its range extends north into southern Ontario, the farthest north of any species in the custard-apple family.
What pollinates pawpaw flowers?
Tiny sap beetles are the most likely pollinators of pawpaw. A May 2021 citizen science project in southern Michigan found Glischrochilus quadrisignatus and Stelidota geminata deep inside the flowers.
Why is pawpaw fruit not sold in grocery stores like apples?
Pawpaw fruit ripens to the point of fermentation soon after picking and bruises easily, so only frozen fruit stores or ships well. Fresh fruit lasts 2 to 3 days at room temperature or about a week refrigerated.
Is the pawpaw poisonous to eat?
The ripe pulp is edible, but the bark, twigs, leaves and seeds contain acetogenins, including the neurotoxin annonacin. Seeds and skin should be removed, and the main concern is heavy year-round eating of Annonaceae fruit products.
How long does a pawpaw tree take to bear fruit?
A pawpaw tree takes 7 to 8 years to go from seedling to fruiting. Growers are advised to plant at least two genetic varieties so the trees can cross-pollinate.
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- 112JournalDetermination of Neurotoxic Acetogenins in Pawpaw ( Asimina triloba ) Fruit by LC-HRMSRobert A. Levine et al. — 2015
- 113JournalAnnonacin in Asimina triloba fruit: Implication for neurotoxicityLisa F. Potts et al. — 2012
- 114JournalTargeted and non-targeted analysis of annonaceous alkaloids and acetogenins from Asimina and Annona species using UHPLC-QToF-MSBharathi Avula et al. — 2018
- 115JournalAnnonacin and Squamocin Contents of Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) and Marolo (Annona crassiflora) Fruits and Atemoya (A. Squamosa × A. Cherimola) SeedsKevin Tran et al. — 2021
- 116BookParkinson's Disease and Related DisordersA. Lannuzel et al. — 2006
- 117JournalCycads and their association with certain neurodegenerative diseasesE. Rivadeneyra-Domínguez et al. — 2014
- 118NewsAs northern Michigan warms, scientists bring tree seedlings from the southKelly House — 3 May 2021
- 119JournalPhytochemical analysis of ten varieties of pawpaw (Asimina triloba L. Dunal) fruit pulpRobert G Brannan — February 2015
- 120JournalAn Evaluation of Antioxidant Compounds, Reducing Potential, and Radical Scavenging of Pawpaw ( Asimina tribloba ) Fruit Pulp from Different Stages of RipenessGrant G Harris et al. — 2009
- 121JournalAsimitrin and 4-hydroxytrilobin, new bioactive annonaceous acetogenins from the seeds of Asimina triloba possessing a bis-tetrahydrofuran ringEun Jung Kim et al. — February 2005
- 122JournalAsimin, asiminacin, and asiminecin: novel highly cytotoxic asimicin isomers from Asimina trilobaGeng-Xian Zhao et al. — June 1994
- 123The Pawpaw Regional Variety TrialKirk W. Pomper et al. — 1999
- 125PawPaw
- 126Rediscovering The PawpawAkshay Ahuja — September 10, 2015
- 127BookFlorida EthnobotanyDaniel F. Austin — 2004
- 128NewsPawpaw: The Midwest Banana?Rosie Lerner — Purdue University, Indiana Yard and Garden – Purdue Consumer Horticulture
- 129The AsimoyaThe Archives of the Rare Fruit Council of Australia — 1 November 1996
- 130This Once-Obscure Fruit Is On Its Way To Becoming PawPaw-PawpularAlly Schweitzer — 15 September 2017
- 133BookA dictionary of the Choctaw languageCyrus Byington — United States Government Printing office — 1915
- 134Paw Paw TunnelTown of Paw Paw, West Virginia
- 135RRHX - Railroad History Time Line - 1860RRHX: Railroad History of Michigan
- 137BookHistory of Miami County, Indiana: From the Earliest Time to the PresentBrant & Fuller — 1887
- 138BookMy Old Kentucky Road Trip: Historic Destinations & Natural WondersCameron M. Ludwick & Blair Thomas Hess — Arcadia Publishing — 30 March 2015
- 140Plant of the Month: The PawpawAllison Miller — 2021-09-22
- 141NATIONAL PAWPAW DAY - Third Thursday in SeptemberNational Day Calendar — August 2, 2019
- 142Third Thursday Thing ProgramKentucky State University
- 143The 'Third Thursday Thing': Eleven Years and Going StrongKentucky State University
- 147BookPawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten FruitAndrew Moore — Chelsea Green Publishing — 2015
- 148Consider the PawpawMatthew Meduri — 15 February 2024