Pawpaw-Palooza: The Inside Scoop on North America’s Taste of the Tropics

Of the more than 148 million specimens and objects in the National Museum of Natural History’s collections, the vast majority are off display. But everything — whether it be a moth, meteorite, moss or mammoth — tells a story that helps museum researchers make sense of the natural world. Each month, the Specimen Spotlight series will highlight a different specimen or object from the world’s largest natural history collection to shed light on why we collect.

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The National Museum of Natural History’s National Herbarium holds more than 5 million plant specimens. These plants hail from around the globe, from algae collected in Antarctica to poisonous leaves gathered in Zimbabwe. But some of the most remarkable plants in the herbarium were collected much closer to home. 

Particularly unique is the pawpaw (Asimina triloba). This fruit tree is found throughout the Washington area and is relatively well-represented in the museum’s collection. Nearly 200 herbarium sheets contain the pawpaw’s boat-shaped leaves or purplish-crimson petals. 

The pawpaw’s localness belies its exotic qualities. The pawpaw’s fruit has a custard-like texture and a tropical taste often compared to that of a banana, mango or pineapple. “The taste is a little wild,” said Gregory Stull, a botanist at the museum who collected several ripe pawpaws in early September. “It has a little bit of funk to it.”

This tropical taste is due to the pawpaw’s taxonomic ties. Pawpaws are the northernmost representative of Annonaceae, a species-rich family of flowering plants that is almost entirely restricted to the tropics. However, fossil evidence suggests that the family was previously a common element of Northern American forests during the Eocene epoch (between 56 and 34 million years ago), a period when Earth was dramatically warmer than today. “The pawpaw is likely a relic from when this area was more tropical,” Stull said.

As the climate cooled after the Eocene, pawpaws were able to endure and eventually spread across eastern North America. They are native to 26 different states and grow everywhere from the Florida Panhandle to western New York to eastern Nebraska. The fruit they produce goes by a variety of regional names, including prairie banana, poor man’s banana, custard apple, Quaker delight and hillbilly mango.

To populate such a wide range, pawpaws were aided by a variety of hungry critters. As animals scarf down pawpaws, they disperse the fruit’s seeds in their droppings. In the past, seed dispersers likely included now-extinct megafauna like giant ground sloths and mastodons. Today, relatively smaller mammals like black bears, squirrels and raccoons spread pawpaw seeds.

Several Native American groups also dispersed pawpaws throughout North America, and they continue to use the fruit for a variety of purposes. Iroquois mash up and dry the fruit to create small cakes while Cherokee use the fruit and inner bark to create cordage. The Shawnee use the emergence of pawpaws to mark a phase of the moon that correlates with September.

According to Alicia Talavera Júdez, a postdoctoral researcher in the museum’s Botany department who is working on a scientific paper on pawpaws, this seemingly out of place fruit has become ingrained in American history. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both planted pawpaw trees at their homes in Virginia. Jefferson even sent pawpaw seeds to acquaintances in Europe. The Lewis and Clark expedition relied on pawpaws for multiple days when their provisions ran low in 1806. Other famous Americans, including Daniel Boone and Mark Twain, were also fond of pawpaws.

While pawpaws have been used by people in North America for millennia, Talavera Júdez was surprised to find that the average American today knows little about this tree. “I was amazed to find out that this tropical-flavored fruit can be grown right in a garden in the Eastern United States,” she said.

According to Philip Evich, a horticulturist at the Smithsonian Gardens, pawpaws face a few hurdles to achieving widespread admiration from fruit fans. Pawpaws are quick to rot, difficult to ship and will not ripen if picked too early. While they have yet to become staples of the produce aisle, pawpaws can often be found at local farmer markets and this time of year.

They can also be found on the National Mall. The museum’s urban bird garden, which Evich helps manage, is home to a living pawpaw tree. Several other pawpaw trees reside in the gardens surrounding the National Museum of the American Indian.

Evich and his team currently oversee one pawpaw tree in the museum’s garden. But the tree’s falling fruit has likely planted plenty of pawpaw seedlings. “Pawpaws grow really rapidly from the seeds,” Evich said. “You're almost walking through a jungle of baby pawpaws in this section of the garden.”

The museum’s mature pawpaw tree has already dropped its fruit for the season. But Evich invites visitors to keep their eyes peeled next August and September. “I encourage you to give it a taste if you’re adventurous and bold,” he said. “It’s such a strange fruit but the novelty of eating it is really fun.”

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Jack Tamisiea | | READ MORE

Jack Tamisiea is a Science Communications Specialist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. In addition to covering all things natural history for the museum's blog, Smithsonian Voices, he tracks media coverage and coordinates filming activities for the museum's Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Jack recently completed his masters in science writing at Johns Hopkins University and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic and other science-focused publications. In his free time, he loves exploring the outdoors with a sketchbook and camera. You can read more of Jack's work at https://jacktamisiea.com.