pawpaw.shtml

The Paw Paw Tree

Photo by Scott Bauer

Image Number K7575-8

Source: ARS Photo Library at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/mar97/k7575-8.htm

The Paw Paw Tree, Asimina triloba, yields 3- to 5-inch-long fruit, the largest fruit native to the United States.

The name, also spelled pawpaw, paw-paw, and papaw, probably derives from the Spanish papaya, perhaps because both plants have large tropical-looking leaves. Its fruit has a flavor somewhat similar to both banana and mango, and has more protein than most fruits.

The flowers require cross pollination, meaning that at least two different trees must grow close enough together for pollinators to carry pollen between them. The flowers produce an odor similar to that of rotting meat that attracts flies or beetles. (Growers sometimes resort to hand pollination or to hanging chicken necks or other meat on the limbs to attract pollinators.)

The earliest documentation of pawpaws is in the 1541 report of the de Soto expedition, who found Native Americans cultivating it east of the Mississippi River. The Lewis and Clark Expedition depended and sometimes subsisted on pawpaws during their travels. Chilled paw paw fruit was a favorite dessert of George Washington.

Source: http://www.bambooweb.com/articles/p/a/Pawpaw.html

The following is an excerpt from William Clark's Journal that he kept on the Lewis and Clark Expedition:

September 18, 1806
William Clark

"At 10 oClock we came too and gathered pottows [papaws] to eate. We have nothing but a fiew Buisquit to eate and are partly compelled to eate poppows ... our party entirely out of provisions subsisting on poppaws. We divide[d] the buiskit which amounted to nearly one buisket per man, this in addition to the poppaws is to last us down to the Settlement, which is 150 miles. The party appear perfectly contented and tell us that they can live very well on the pappaws. ... "