Consider the Pawpaw | Hacker News Reader

Consider the Pawpaw

beltmag.com

95 pointsPaulHoule65 comments

If you're in a region where they grow - temperate but with sufficient overwinter chill - you could consider planting some. They're nice looking trees with large leaves, the fruit is tasty, zebra swallowtail butterfly caterpillars feed off of the leaves, and you're helping preserve an endemic American fruit tree.

My Dad's little one-man nursery is a good source of trees. ;)

https://www.blossomnursery.com/

(Some of you may also appreciate the style of his website as reminiscent of the "old web".)

[Edit: grammar.]

That website is probably older than I am. It’s beautiful! I wish more people had personal websites that looked fun and customized like that!

Oh wow, thank you sharing your dad's nursery. I am going to purchase some germinated seeds from him for the university greenhouse collection that I manage.

I haven’t been able to find them for a few years now. If I can I will order some.

Beware they can make you sick!

A friend was at a potluck a few weeks ago and someone brought dehydrated pawpaw and it made almost everyone who ate it sick within a couple hours.

Another account:

https://nativebatch.com/2019/08/28/my-upsetting-experience-w...

Your anecdote sounds more likely a result of improper preservation than anything else, since it's unlikely everyone present would have had an intolerance. The author of the page you linked also seems to imply that their reaction was somehow specifically due to the annonacin, however I think a food allergy/intolerance is more likely (many people are allergic to citrus, or other tree fruit, for example). Annonacin toxicity is certainly a concern and effects of long-term exposure are not well understood, however the population from the most frequently cited study (namely, the well-known Guadeloupe study) also regularly consumed tea made from the leaves and bark of the tree which contain significantly more annonacin than the fruit -- in addition to eating several serving of the fruit nearly every day. I think for most, having a pawpaw every now and then will not do any harm. That being said, it is good to use a little caution when trying a new family of fruit (or plant in general) since you could be unlucky enough to have a reaction.

Most anecdotes on the internet align with the article I posted and point to cooked or dehydrated pawpaw as the offender not the raw pulp (as opposed to the skin).

I am the proud gardener of seven paw paw trees. I've been tending them for a little more than three years now and am very VERY excited for when (if ever) they produce fruit! I wish there were more places to find other varieties (e.g. not Asimona Triloba) that might help with pollination.

My understanding (and you probably already know) is that PawPaws are pollinated by flies (and not bees).

At a medieval/fantasy campground I've planted thousands of trees at, we located the pawpaw trees near the bathrooms and trash cans. Both of which attract flies.

Perhaps when (or shortly before) the pawpaws are in bloom, you dump some charnel or other biowaste near the trees to help attract flies?

We used to hang road kill up in our pawpaw trees to get the flies to come to them.

Some people drape bacon on the limbs to attract flies to pollinate the pawpaws!

You can also try hand pollinating with a soft brush if you’re not interested in adorning the boughs with rotting meat.

Why don't grocery stores stock pawpaw fruit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38851025 - Jan 2024 (151 comments)

Why Is the Most American Fruit So Hard to Buy? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33139936 - Oct 2022 (18 comments)

David Foster Wallace it ain’t.

https://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf

What a terrible imitation! Uses the format of that classic, but completely butchers it.

DFW did a dark reflection of a travel piece. His anti-social, elitist, nihilistic tone was expertly woven in, and creates tension between the subject and author.

This just... is travel journalism, but using that one's structure? A mirror of a mirror, all meaning lost.

He did a piece on taking a cruise and hating it. Found himself in the ship's library being torched in chess by a 12 year old.

chef's kiss

I've been harvesting these in the wild for years. They are pretty difficult to describe in flavor (banana/mango/tropical being a good approximation), as the flavor isn't consistent even between close patches. They have about a 3 week ripe window mid-to-end August (depending on the shade) in my area when they should be harvested. I typically just push on the slender tree & if any fall; they're ripe. It's best to harvest them, halve them, scoop them into a freezer bag, and use when desired. It's the only way I've found to be able to preserve them & the delicate flavor some of them tend to have.

I've always been curious, but based on your description I need to try them! I know of a large tree on a trail I hike, but the only way I'll get one from there is by them falling on their own. They are always really squishy when I do come across one, so I've never been brave enough to take a taste. How do you know they are good or ripe?

The softer they are, the more ripe they are. Outwards, they may have a spot of browning towards the overripe end like a banana. The ones that I usually go for are green with a slight give.

I'm central Ohio and only heard of pawpaw fruit a couple times as a tiny child. Totally forgot they existed. Most of Dad's foraging was a different season (morels). How would one go about trying to find (relatively) local to try pawpaw when they're in season?

Take hikes near/along rivers. They tend to grow near them.

When I've tried to search what does pawpaw tastes like the two most specific descriptions I could find was "mild pawpaw taste" and "not banana".

My favorite niche YouTube channel has an episode on pawpaws: https://youtu.be/zUy2O3qDT8I?si=HvvH2SZsDy4Yc88e

He describes it "like if you took soursop, mango, and banana and blended it into a smoothie". Maybe not helpful if you haven't had soursop.

A ripe pawpaw is like a banana/mango flavor. Bitter and tough before ripe, but very sweet and soft when fully ripe with almost no bitter or sour. Slightly stringy like a squash.

> When I've tried to search what does pawpaw tastes like the two most specific descriptions I could find was "mild pawpaw taste" and "not banana".

The taste is very variable in different cultivars of this fruit. Some wild are said to be awful, but in the edible ones there are basically two groups: "plain banana" and "complex tropical mix".

"not banana" means that the flavor is a mix of tropical fruits. More acidic and with complex overtones that can be described as pineapple, mango, or bubblegum

Banana custard but slightly more strongly flavored; creamy, white to yellow flesh.

It tastes like a mix of an apple and a banana.

I had a couple of large pawpaw trees in the backyard of the house I lived in when I went to University of Michigan (and later lived for a while after graduation), and I saved a lot of seeds. They pretty much all germinated and I'm in the process of growing a bunch more in my new place a few towns over and with a lot more acreage. There are now quite a few growers and professional greenhouses with trees available, so you don't have to wait 20 years to see fruit. I bought a couple 5 year old trees and I'm giving them one more season to finish establishing before I actually let them fruit, but they did produce blossoms last year and if I'd wanted to pollinate them, I could have had a few hands. Usefully, they are relatively unattractive to the huge and very frustrating deer population in this area, so they're doing better than the tart cherries I spent a pretty penny on.

Or the prickly pear

If you prick a raw paw, next time beware!

Don’t pick a prickly pear by the paw, when you pick a pear try to use the claw!

But you don’t need to use the paw when you pick a pear of the big pawpaw

Have I given you a clue?

Glad someone brought up this reference :) This is what I thought of too.

(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5dhSdnDb3tk&t=1m14s)

Do paw-paw give bears/non-human mammals any health problems (see Parkinson's discussion elsewhere)?

(I see down thread that the paw-paw of Disney's Jungle Book would not be the paw-paw discussed here, I think? Baloo was a Sloth Bear, I think and I don't think they have those in N. America??)

The Jungle Book is set in India, so you would expect it to be a papaya but that doesn't really make sense either. This page talks about it: http://expatpawpaw.blogspot.com/2016/02/that-song-about-pawp...

Honestly I'm kinda shocked that an article all about explaining what a pawpaw is didn't lead with the fact that the same word can refer to two completely different fruits.

Golly! Thanks, Baloo!

Was that from memory? If so, kudos to you!

My dad’s favorite movie growing up. He thinks of himself as Balloo incarnate. But I also have plenty other Disney songs memorized. Might be my only real talent!

I heard that instantly when I saw “pawpaw”.

They're native here. I've been trying to get some trees going for a few years. So far, my trees have been slow to grow and I've lost most of what I planted.

I've planted a half dozen clones from a few different trees back in 2021, and one or two of those has survived. Last year, I planted a few seedlings.

They need shade when they're young. Some say they're good after two years and some say you need to let them get to be a certain size before you give them full sun.

I changed from wire tomato cages and old sheets to tree wraps and stakes and the trees seem to have fared fine.

Very nice when they are good but in my experience, somewhat like an avocado, they tend to turn extremely quickly and once they are on the way out, they are _not good_

For others, they're often described as tasting like banana custard or mango. Rich and creamy flesh with favs bean sized black seeds.

In South Africa we refer to the papaya as pawpaw, I'm in England now, and here they just say papaya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya. This article mentions papaya as a separate fruit. Is there something missing?

The article covers it rather well, if you get far enough in, I thought.

This pawpaw is a fruit native to North America, and the name sharing is just coincidence. Here's the Wikipedia page for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba

Well, yes: pawpaw is a different fruit in the US Midwest, and that's what the article is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba

Growing up in US midwest we learned the folk song with the line: "Way down yonder in the paw paw patch...".

They grow in the South and all the way to the Atlantic. Including small parts of the North Florida panhandle.

Carica papaya versus Asimina triloba

I planted a Pawpaw about 20 years ago. Can't say it's doing great but it's not dead yet. Takes like 20 years for them to start producing fruit. Last year one of my daughters told me it had a single fruit on it, and then told me she'd ate it, so I've still not seen a Pawpaw on it

Pollination is a whole adventure -- they're naturally pollinated by flies not bees, so you either need to hang a few dead animals in your tree or you need to figure out hand pollinating. There are some good resources at Kentucky State, and I've found the researcher there very friendly and approachable if you need some advice on it. Shoot her an email.

https://www.kysu.edu/academics/college-acs/school-of-ace/paw...

I live in a region that apparently has Pawpaw trees that grow natively and until last year had never even heard of the fruit!

This year I'm hoping to try one of these for the first time :)

I figure it's a pretty unique experience and helps me appreciate some of the local agriculture that's hard to find elsewhere.

Anyone know of folks being able to grow any varieties in Manatee County Florida? I've spent a bit of time looking for varieties but everyone seems to indicate it's too hot.

As a cat dad I consider myself a pawpaw.

Well, that joke shows you’ve got the dad part down.

I've been slowly growing 3 trees over the past few years

neurotoxic? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22130466/

Missing mention of pawpaw's annonacin content, which causes Parkinsonism.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22130466/

"Pawpaw fruit contains a high concentration of annonacin, which is toxic to cortical neurons."

https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs...

"Pawpaw fruit contains high concentrations of annonacin, which is toxic to nerve cells. In addition there have been case reports of possibly related nerve toxicity. Therefore, chronic use should be avoided."

Probably not a huge issue as long as you only eat it every so often. But I wonder about the possibility of producing varieties of pawpaw (or soursop or other related Annonas) that don't produce annonacin. Probably could be done with genetic engineering, or much more slowly with selective breeding.

Given that there are places where people consume Annonas very often, and that this may lead to alarmingly high rates of parkinsonism [1], this could be considered an effective public health intervention.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10440304/

The evidence we have for safety of low-level consumption doesn't look great.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7691614/

"The paucity of adequate studies, particularly related to long‐term use of A. muricata supplements, currently does not allow the establishment of a safe intake level."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10092620/

"Cognitive performance assessed with the MDRS worsens above a cumulative consumption threshold of 0.2 fruit‐years of Annonaceae fruit/juice (ie, one fruit every 5 days for 1 year) or with consumption of any quantity of Annonaceae herbal tea."

"one fruit every 5 days for 1 year" is far above what I would consider occasional consumption.

Pawpaws are not in season for very long, and do not keep well. Unless you are canning or otherwise preserving them, a dozen per year is probably a high estimate for people who live in areas where they grow.

Relatives such as the soursop are available year-round in tropical areas, but if you limit your intake to the pawpaw only, eating a handful when they are ripe each year probably won't hurt you.

I lived in Maryland near a forest with a large number of wild pawpaw trees that produced an enormous amount of fruit, and was very into foraging as a hobby, and I don't think I ever ate more than six or seven in a single season.

The bark and leaves are the primary sources of benzyltetrahydroisoquinolines.

This study is of a small island population.

I don't know about Parkinson's, but acetogenins[1] work by down regulating ATP production in mitochondria. This mechanism has been studied for potential applications from cancer treatment to pesticides.[2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetogenin

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_L._McLaughlin &c.

In addition to what other commenters have noted about difficulty eating enough quantity, this is not a commercial fruit and thus no standards for what you'll get. There are a variety of on-going breeding programs for commercial pawpaws. This is just one more item on the checklist to successfully selectively breed out. If you see pawpaws in the supermarket its unlikely current studies will apply to it. Breeders understanding how to breed for and against the annonacin content is actually very high on their list of priorities, not for eating, but the high annonacin makes pawpaws an excellent deer and mosquito repellent, and is being studied as a source for chemo-therapy and other drugs. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18598079/ I suspect these will be the first commercial use cases for the pawpaw as they use the trees bark, leaves, and skins of the fruit and not the fragile flesh.

Fortunately you’ve gotta work pretty hard for chronic use, since it’s only available for a couple months out of the year. This is definitely a concern if they ever do develop a pawpaw industry, though.

This depends on where you live.

I've lived in a country where it was available year round, grew like a weed in gardens, and was eaten on the regular by many people I know.

The fruit being discussed is endemic to a portion of the southeast United States.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/nrs/atlas/tree/v3/367

You may be thinking of a relative like the soursop which does have a broader range.

The person you’re replying to probably assumed (as I did) that the article was about papaya, which is called pawpaw in some parts of the world. They will probably be relieved (as am I) to find out it’s about an unrelated fruit.

You're on the money there, phew.

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