I spent a lot of time in the woods as a kid and I remember seeing Pawpaw leaves – they are notable due to their size, the second largest leaf in the deciduous wood of the eastern U.S. – only behind that of the much less common Big Leaf Magnolia. But I do not remember seeing Pawpaw fruit. Perhaps that is because I just happened not to be in the wood for the 2 days they are ripe each September.

I’m being facetious but the Pawpaw does have an extraordinary brief “ripe” season. More on that later.

Pawpaws have their groupies. Generally elderly women of Appalachian decent who wear house dresses. OK, at least that was my experience as a primary care physician. Occasionally we would have older patients with chronic kidney disease who just could not pass up Pawpaw season. Pawpaws have high potassium content, and consumption of them in the face of poor kidney function can result in toxic potassium levels and hospital admissions. But true Pawpaw lovers just could not resist eating them each fall.

The name Pawpaw arose from European settlers in Florida and the Caribbean who had it confused with the Papaya, with which it has a resemblance.

The Pawpaw tree is unique in many ways. It is an understory tree that is perfectly content in the shade of its taller deciduous forest peers. It can also be seen on a woodland edge but the larger ones that I have seen have been in deeply shaded woods. The deep forest specimens also appear to have larger leaves than those seen on the edge of a woodland. I suspect that is the evolutionary cause of the large leaves – better to capture the filtered sun on the forest floor. Resources say that the trunk can get up to 12 inches in diameter and the tree 40 feet tall, but I have never seen one near that big. Perhaps 6 inches in diameter and 30 feet tall was the largest that I have seen.

In addition to the fruit, something else that I never noted in my childhood was its flower. It is unique – a one inch, maroon colored flower. It emits a scent described as “the faint odor of rotting meat”, which is perfect for attracting the carrion flies and carrion beetles that pollinate it.

Pawpaws are self-incompatible, meaning pollen from one flower can not pollinate another flower on the same plant. That makes reproduction a challenge since Pawpaws are clonal, meaning they spread locally from shoots off the parent root system. So when you see a Pawpaw patch more than likely the individual trees are in fact genetically identical and therefore can not pollinate each others flowers. I believe that this explains why it is not uncommon to see a colony of Pawpaw trees without any fruit – no outside pollen had been brought in for successful pollination. That happened this year in the small wood in our yard. Next year I will take a craft paint brush to a nearby woodland and collect some Pawpaw pollen and act as the carrion fly.

Following pollination the fruit begins to develop.

As the summer bleeds into September the Pawpaw fruit ripens. I generally think of mid-September as the peak time in the Ohio River Valley, but this year we found them ripe and starting to fall from the trees in the first week of September, perhaps due to the drought.

But finding them can be a challenge. I know of no other fruit that appears to be designed to avoid detection. They, like the leaves of the Pawpaw, take on a slight yellow tint as they ripen. Perhaps a “seek and find” will demonstrate what I mean. How many Pawpaw fruits can you see in this photo?

Well here is the answer.

In reality it was perhaps a little easier in person, but not much. In this small thicket we found about 20 fruits and they were so perfectly ripe that if I barely touched them they fell to the floor where others were lying.

It seems that they all get ripe at the same time – over a period of a few days. Perhaps the plan is that in mass they emit enough scent, similar to that of a slightly over ripe banana, to attract larger mammals to come ingest the fruit, including the seeds, which will then be deposited some distance away from the parent tree when the mammal defecates.

We saw evidence of that on one of our hikes when we found Pawpaw seeds in scat on a rock. Most of the more fragile fecal matter had been washed away by rain.

It is felt that new trees developing off the root system is a much more common way for Pawpaws to reproduce as compared to seed germination. But that does not allow for gene mixing which promotes better species survival and, as noted earlier, limits pollination and fruit production.

The fruit can develop as a single fruit, as seen in the title photo, or a cluster of 2 to 4.

When ripe the Pawpaw has a texture similar to an Avacado that is perfect for guacamole. When sliced the moist, soft custard like meat of the fruit is exposed. There are as many descriptions of the flavor of the Pawpaw as there are tasters, but they read like those of a wine or craft beer tasting – some mixture of banana, mango, citrus, passion fruit, chocolate and nut. My field notes from our hike two weeks ago say, “very rich flavors of banana and mango, with an aftertaste of nutmeg”. For this taster a little bit goes a long way as the richness and the texture of a banana past its prime does not appeal to my palate. But that is me. Infuse it into a porter ale and I might be a fan.

Native Americans would eat them fresh, as well as make them into a flour, or store them as a dried fruit “leather” for later consumption. European settlers, in addition to eating them fresh, would make them into desserts such as custards and pies. For these groups with a culinary lifestyle of very limited sugar I can understand the appeal.

So it is mid-September and prime Pawpaw season. It is time to head out to a healthy deciduous wood and search for the large yellow and green leaves in the understory. Look for the fruit but don’t forget to check on the forest floor – perhaps you are the “large mammal” lucky enough to feast. Then spend hours trying to come up with the right words to describe its flavor.

FUN FACT: The famous wildlife artist John James Audubon used the feathery leaf bud of the Pawpaw tree as paint brushes.