Why You’ve Never Had a Pawpaw

Cluster of unripe green pawpaws growing on a branch with broad leaves in a woodland setting. — Pawpaws ripen on low-hanging trees along creek beds and forest edges (if you know where to look).

It’s native. It’s sweet. It grows along half the rivers in Appalachia. And still, most folks in pawpaw country have never tasted one.

Maybe you’ve passed it a hundred times: growing low along a creek, hidden beneath the canopy. Or maybe you’ve caught a whiff in late September: something tropical and overripe, like banana pudding left in the sun. That smell? That’s a pawpaw, North America’s forgotten fruit.

It didn’t disappear because it failed. It disappeared because it wouldn’t behave.

A Mango in the Holler

Imagine a mango crossed with a banana, maybe with a hint of melon. Now give it the texture of custard and the shelf life of a ripe peach left on your dashboard. That’s a pawpaw.

The fruit grows in clusters on small understory trees, often in shady river valleys. It’s not flashy. Greenish skin. Soft flesh. Big brown seeds like polished stones. It bruises easily, spoils quickly, and ripens all at once, then drops.

And while it might look like a tropical interloper, it’s not. The pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to the United States, and it’s been feeding people here longer than peaches or apples ever dreamed.

Why You’ve Never Had a Pawpaw

The fruit breaks every rule of modern agriculture.

It ripens fast and unpredictably. It doesn’t store well. The skin is thin, the fruit soft, and once picked, it begins to turn within a few days. That makes it useless for grocery store shelves and shipping warehouses.

You won’t find a commercial pawpaw industry. There’s no Dole of the Appalachians, no rows of refrigerated trucks hauling pawpaws to Walmart. There are backyard patches, word-of-mouth foragers, and maybe one guy at the farmers market who keeps them hidden in a cooler behind the table.

And even if you do manage to find one, it might be past its prime by the time you get it home.

But logistics aren’t the only reason the pawpaw vanished from our tables.

It’s also about culture. It was a fruit of the margins; gathered, not bought. Indigenous tribes harvested it alongside wild game and nuts. Enslaved people used it as a staple when rations ran thin. Settlers turned it into bread, brandy, and survival food.

Then came industrial farming. Supermarkets. Uniform produce stacked in perfect pyramids. And the pawpaw, with its bruises and blemishes, didn’t fit.

We forgot the fruit because we forgot the way we used to eat.

A ripe pawpaw cut in half to show its soft, yellow-orange flesh and large dark seeds, held in a person’s hand. — The inside of a ripe pawpaw is soft, sweet, and tropical (best enjoyed with a spoon and a short walk from the tree). Image: Joe Grant

The Pawpaw Revival

It’s not gone, though. Just harder to find.

Across Appalachia and the Midwest, there’s a growing underground of pawpaw fans. Backyard growers. Permaculture nerds. Chefs with a fondness for regional flavors. They’re saving seeds, grafting cultivars, and experimenting with pawpaw ice cream, custards, breads, and even beer.

There’s even a Pawpaw Festival in Ohio that draws thousands each year. In parts of Virginia and Kentucky, you’ll find scattered events celebrating the fruit—short-season affairs that disappear as fast as the harvest.

Breeding programs are trying to create pawpaw trees with longer shelf lives and firmer flesh. But there’s a limit to how far the fruit will bend. And maybe that’s the point.

You can’t rush a pawpaw. You can’t scale it up or ship it out. You have to go looking. Or get lucky. Or know someone who knows someone who won’t tell you where their patch is.

What We Lost When We Forgot

The pawpaw is more than a curiosity. It’s a reminder of how quickly something can vanish—not just from the landscape, but from memory.

A fruit doesn’t need to go extinct to be lost. It just needs to be forgotten.

Ask around, and you’ll find Appalachian folks who remember their grandparents talking about pawpaws but never tasted one themselves. Entire counties grew up without them, even though the trees were still there. Even though the fruit still dropped every fall.

When food becomes just a product—something wrapped, priced, and shipped—it loses the story. Pawpaws still carry the story. Of foraging. Of survival. Of things that don’t scale, don’t last, and aren’t for sale.

It’s a fruit that asks you to pay attention. To wait. To wander a little.

Infographic showing a pawpaw tree with identification tips: leaf shape, flower color, fruit appearance, seed type, and bark texture. — Not sure if it’s a pawpaw? This guide breaks down what to look for, from the flower shape to the mottled bark Credit: 8billiontrees.com

If You Want to Try One…

You’ve got a few options, but none of them are guaranteed.

Start by asking at your local farmers market—especially in August or September. Talk to older neighbors. Keep an eye out along creek banks and woodland edges. Look for small trees with drooping leaves and fruit that hangs in pairs.

Or plant one yourself. Just don’t expect instant results. They’re slow to grow and fussy about pollination. But once established, they’ll feed you—and probably your grandkids.

And when you do get one? Don’t bite straight in. Peel the skin. Mind the seeds. Eat it with a spoon, maybe chilled. It’ll taste like banana pudding and sunshine and something you didn’t know you missed.

Because the truth is, you probably have walked past a pawpaw. You just didn’t know what it was.

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