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Pawpaw Trees

Pawpaw, Asimina triloba. The name of this plant is some times spelled Papaw - and in that form is often confused with another fruit that sometimes goes by that name, the Papaya, Carica papaya. (The latter is in a totally different family than our Pawpaw, and can only grow in tropical areas.)

Our Pawpaw, which grows as far north as New York and southern Ontario, out west as far as Nebraska and Texas, and south to Florida, is known by several other names including the American Custard Apple, the West Virginia Banana, and the Indiana Banana. There are about seven other members of the genus Asimina, all growing in the southeastern U.S.

The Pawpaw made some headlines in 1992 when it was reported that a Purdue University researcher had isolated a powerful anti-cancer drug, as well as a safe natural pesticide from the Pawpaw tree. The substances are said to be primarily found in the twigs and small branches.

In the book, Sturtevant's Edible Plants of the World, one finds the Pawpaw fruit called "...a natural custard, too luscious for the relish of most people. The fruit is nutritious and a great resource to the savages." Millspaugh, in American Medicinal Plants, describes the fruit as "soft, sweet and insipid, having a taste somewhat between that of the May-apple and the banana, tending to the former." The Peterson Field Guide mentions that the seeds, along with being an emetic, have narcotic properties.

Pawpaws should gain in popularity because deer tend not to eat them. While they will eat the fruits which have fallen to the ground, it is thought that the unpleasant smell the stem emits when it is damaged keeps the tree from being palatable to deer. In fact, in certain areas along the C and O Canal, botanists feel that it is becoming a weed, taking over places that used to have a wide variety of species, but where seedlings of other trees are being gobbled up by deer, leaving the pawpaws to thrive.