Pawpaw: Sweet, soft and largely ignored

Today, the squirrels, raccoons and other furry foodies might be eating better than us.

They're scampering up trees and chewing up pawpaws. Meanwhile, we humans should be down below "picking 'em up and puttin' 'em in a basket," just like the old song says. But pawpaws - tropical-tasting fruit that are native to North America and grow in the wild in our corner of Virginia - are mostly ignored, the sweet flesh largely left for scavenging wildlife.

The clusters of potato-shaped fruits ripen this time of year, turning from bright green to yellow. When they change to brown, they're overripe.

Touch a ripe one and you'll think it's rotten, but the flesh inside has the consistency of custard and the color of a perfectly ripe mango.

Turns out, people have been eating them for centuries. Native Americans ate pawpaws - sometimes called "Indian bananas" - and Lewis and Clark ate the fruit during their explorations.

Because they have a short shelf life, pawpaws aren't widely grown or available commercially. Which made finding pawpaws difficult - at first.

I'd heard that a few were for sale a couple of weekends ago at the Five Points Community Farm Market in Norfolk. I missed that boat, and market manager Bev Sell couldn't say whether the man who brought them from his Lafayette-Winona property would be back.

Instead, she pointed me west, to Beulah Land Fruits in Courtland, where John "Perry" Jones has recently started growing pawpaws to sell. Sadly, his trees bloomed this spring but never set fruit. They're funny plants, he said. Maybe next year.

I finally scored a pawpaw at Norfolk Botanical Garden, in the Bristow Butterfly Garden. The trees there soar 15 to 20 feet, with broad, lush, drooping leaves and, on the day of my visit, several clusters of fruit. Scattered beneath the trees were gnawed pawpaws, evidence that the furry epicures had arrived first.

The pawpaws grow in the butterfly garden for a reason, and it's not pie. The trees play host to zebra swallowtail butterflies, whose only larval food is the pawpaw tree, said gardener Carly Delaurier-Flanigan.

Although picking fruit in the garden is prohibited, she allowed me to bring home three pawpaws - two green ones and one pale yellow.

Once I had a pawpaw in hand, suddenly they were everywhere. The next day, while stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate 64 just east of Williamsburg, I spied two pawpaw trees growing on the side of the road and flush with fruit. I later noticed one in a neighbor's yard.

A colleague sent a note saying that Bonnie Denault grows pawpaws at her home in the Great Neck section of Virginia Beach solely for the benefit of the butterflies.

And Karen Green, who lives in the Lynnhaven section of Virginia Beach, has been tending two prolific pawpaws on her property for decades. Please come and get some, she said. So I did.

A pair of trees grows near her driveway - not wild ones, but cultivated varieties called Zimmerman. One had already produced all that it would, but the other was covered with clusters of fruit. We picked a dozen ripe ones off the ground.

Green loves everything about the pawpaw tree: its symmetry; the silvery, pink-tinged bark; the purple, bell-shaped blooms in spring; and, of course, the fruit. Because it spreads via runners, it's hard to contain. But that's a small price, she said.

In her kitchen, Green gave me a short course in eating fresh pawpaw. Just cut off an end and peel away the paper-thin skin with a paring knife. Remove any flesh that is rust-colored.

"That sometimes has a gamey taste," Green warned.

Cut the peeled fruit in half. Then eat around the big black seeds that look like double-sized watermelon seeds and are neatly stacked in the center of the soft fruit.

The flesh has many layers of taste: pear, pineapple, banana, mango and a curious undertone that I think is unique to this fruit.

You can also pulp them, Green said, a sticky job that requires squishing the seeds out with bare hands. The sunset-colored pulp can then be frozen in a resealable plastic bag.

What to do with it?

Kentucky State University, which has an entire pawpaw research program, suggests making bread, pie and ice cream. Green has made many sweets. You can substitute pawpaw for any recipe calling for mango or banana, she said. Just use an equal amount of pawpaw fruit.

But one of her favorite ways to eat pawpaw is slightly thawed pulp, like a dish of ice cream.

So now that you're hankering for a pawpaw, know this: They grow in rich, moist soil in the understory of wooded areas. One way to tell whether what you see is a pawpaw is to crumple a leaf. If it smells faintly of fresh asphalt, it's likely a pawpaw, said Delaurier-Flanigan of the botanical garden.

If it's brown, it's probably beyond the eating stage. And beware: The fruit from the wild may be bitter.

But if you find a paw

paw that tastes good, plant the seed while it's still wet, Green said. The fruit of the new tree should taste like that of the parent.

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com