The Pawpaw as an Exotic Fruit

Funny piece on NPR about the pawpaw that treats them as something truly strange and exotic:

Recently, I heard about a secret snack. Kayakers who paddle the waters near Washington, D.C., told me about a mango-like fruit that grows along the banks of the Potomac — a speckled and homely skin that hides a tasty treat.

A tropical-like fruit here, really? Yep. It's the only temperate member of a tropical family of trees. You can't buy the pawpaw in stores, so for years, the only way to eat them was straight from the tree.

I was intrigued. So I decided to hunt for a pawpaw myself.

D.C. nature guide Matt Cohen showed me how to find them.

We took the Billy Goat Trail on the Maryland side of the Potomac River. "Wow," was the first word out of my mouth when I tasted one we found on our hike. It's sort of mango-meets-the-banana ... with a little hint of melon.

Pawpaws grow all along the Potomac from Washington westward, so I have seen many and eaten a few while working in the C&O Canal Park. There are two ways to eat them. Before the frost they are firm-textured but not very sweet. After frost they come to their peak of flavor, but the texture softens to something like a badly bruised banana. (But with lots of big seeds, as you can see above.) They are fun to eat if you find them yourself in the woods, but deprived of that special thrill they probably don't stand up to bananas and pineapples.

That means they will not be successfully commercialized and will remain a secret woodland treat known only by those of us who frequent the riverbanks, and that is how I like them.