🥭 A whole patch, one tree

A pawpaw does not wait for a seed to make another pawpaw. Ohio State University’s extension service explains: “Pawpaw trees can also reproduce asexually by sending up root sprouts (rootsuckers), a process known as ‘suckering.’ This clonal propagation results in genetically identical trees forming around the parent tree.” USDA’s plant guide says the same thing in the words people actually use for it: “This plant spreads quickly by suckers to form a ‘pawpaw patch.’” So a patch can be a crowd or it can be one tree wearing many trunks — and you cannot tell by looking. Now put that next to how the flowers work. They are, the fact sheet says, “perfect” (each flower has both female and male parts) and “protogynous (the female portion of the flower matures before the pollen is shed),” which is a way of making sure a flower cannot fertilise itself. And the trees go further than that: “They require two genetically different plants to fertilize and produce fruit.” Identical twins do not count. That is why the fact sheet warns growers about “An unfortunate and common mistake made by inexperienced growers … establishing an orchard using a single pawpaw variety,” and in that case “the trees seldom bear fruit unless the flowers are pollinated manually or by insects that have come into contact with genetically different pawpaw pollen elsewhere.” USDA’s guide gives the same instruction in six words: “At least two plants are needed for cross-pollination.” And the fact sheet’s list of what might carry the pollen is not the list you would guess: “Potential native pollinators of pawpaw include early-emerging beetles and flies.”

Basis: Ohio State University Extension, Ohioline fact sheet ANR-0187, “Pawpaws: An Alternative Fruit Crop in the Midwest” (16 July 2025), sections Physiology and Propagation; USDA NRCS National Plant Data Center, Plant Guide, “Pawpaw — Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal” (21 May 2001), sections Establishment and Management. Quotations unchanged.

The fruit is the reason anybody puts up with all that. Ohio State’s fact sheet describes it plainly: “The fruit pulp has a custard-like texture, and the flavor is reminiscent of mango, pineapple, banana, papaya, citrus, and other tropical fruits.” People have been reaching for the word banana for a very long time — the same fact sheet lists local names including “wild banana, Appalachian banana, and hillbilly mango,” and USDA’s plant guide has its own collection: “False banana, pawpaw apple, custard apple, custard banana, poor man’s banana, banana tree, Indiana banana, Nebraska banana, Hoosier banana, Michigan banana, white plum.” A tree with that many nicknames is a tree people knew. It behaves nothing like a supermarket fruit, though. In Ohio the fruit “typically ripen in September in a rather short harvest window of three to five weeks”; inside there are “six to 15 inedible brown seeds” and those seeds “can be over one inch in length”; and the leaves, USDA notes, are “aromatic, with a smell reminiscent of bell pepper.” Rub a pawpaw leaf and you will not think of fruit at all.

Basis: Ohio State University Extension, ANR-0187, sections “Fruit Characteristics and Production” and Physiology and Propagation; USDA NRCS, Plant Guide, “Pawpaw — Asimina triloba,” sections Alternate names and Description. Quotations unchanged.

A big soft fruit full of big seeds is an advertisement, and the customers are not people. Ohio State’s fact sheet lists them: when the fruit is not picked, “the fruit is often consumed and then its seeds are dispersed by wildlife including opossums, raccoons, squirrels, deer, foxes, bears, and some birds.” The leaves are a different story — they are defended. “The leaves, bark, twigs, unripe fruit, and seeds contain natural herbivory deterrents (Annonaceous acetogenins) and asimicin,” the fact sheet says, and USDA’s guide notes the practical result: the plants “are not browsed by deer.” One animal eats those leaves anyway, and it eats nothing else. “Pawpaw is the primary host plant in North America for the Zebra swallowtail butterfly whose larvae co-evolved with the Asimina species,” the fact sheet explains; USDA’s guide describes the caterpillars’ side of that arrangement — the larvae of the zebra swallowtail “feed exclusively on the leaves.” The butterfly needs the tree in a way the tree does not need the butterfly. People are in this story too, and early: the fact sheet records that pawpaw fruit “were routinely collected and consumed by the Cherokees and Shawnees, and fibrous parts of the plant were used for other needs (e.g., fishing nets, rope, strings),” and USDA’s guide goes further, crediting people with the map itself — “Some Native American tribes cultivated the pawpaw for fruit and are responsible for its widespread range today.”

Basis: Ohio State University Extension, ANR-0187, sections “Fruit Characteristics and Production,” “Pests and Diseases,” and “Historical Connections”; USDA NRCS, Plant Guide, “Pawpaw — Asimina triloba,” sections Uses and Management. Quotations unchanged.