Photo via Getty Images
Gasp! Someone posted on Instagram or Reddit that they found a ripe pawpaw. This must mean that we’ve got … maybe a week or two to find some for ourselves. Time to grab a rucksack and head to the river.
Pawpaws are our native, northernmost, special-baby tropical fruits that appear each year for approximately the same duration as Cinderella’s coach. Fragrant and custardy with hints of banana, mango and soursop, pawpaws don’t taste like anything else that grows in Virginia. You also won’t find many places that sell them, so you might find yourself becoming a forager around this time each year. Finding them is nearly as enjoyable as eating them; it’s part of the experience.
That said, realistically, you need a bit of time and patience to forage. Don’t have either? Head to Powhatan State Park’s inaugural Pawpaw Festival on Sept. 16. Guests can purchase pawpaws, embark on a guided tour for tips from the pros and even sip a beer brewed with the fruit.
“We have a lot of local vendors coming, including one who’ll be selling pawpaws and pawpaw trees, and one of the local breweries [Fine Creek Brewing Co.] is bringing pawpaw beer to sample,” says a park representative. A $5 park entry fee and a $5 event ticket get you in.
Plan No. 2: Pick a favorite James River access point. Pawpaws love water, and they tend to grow beside big bodies of it. You might find them near lakes or reservoirs, too, but Pony Pasture, 42nd Street, Reedy Creek and the Buttermilk Trail are tried-and-true locales. The trees are skinny — about a 6-inch maximum trunk thickness and 10 to 30 feet in height. Their leaves are big in comparison, oblong with smooth edges. The edges are how you can tell them apart from young hickory trees. Hickories have large, oblong leaves, too, but the edges are sawtoothed or jagged.
See a patch of skinny, big-leafed trees in the distance? Start sniffing. Sometimes you can smell pawpaws before you spot them. There’s no mistaking the tropical scent. Green fruits with dark spots, hanging low on the branches or laying on the ground below the trees, are what you’ll be gathering. They should be firm but not hard and give slightly under gentle pressure. Fruit on the ground is a good sign that the full-sized pawpaws still hanging on the tree, comparable in shape to small mangoes, are ripe. Once they fall, they have a short window for eating. You don’t want very underripe ones, though — they don’t ripen well once picked.
One Richmonder was so charmed by pawpaws that he created a nursery and orchard dedicated to growing them. Mike Ferster of Woodside Pawpaw in Middleburg recalls, “In 2017, I had my first pawpaw. One of my parents’ friends took me and my dad; we’d never heard of this fruit. Both of my folks are nature minded — master gardener, master naturalist. And it was love at first sight, trying the pawpaw. Once you see and know how to identify them, you start seeing them everywhere. And I’ve grown up around these incredible fruits and trees, and I had no idea. Like, wait, this is native? This tastes like it should be in the tropics!”
Ferster says that stories about pawpaws can be found in many sources that outline Virginia’s history: recollections from Underground Railroad travelers, records of the adventures of Lewis and Clark, the story of Daniel Boone, and the pre-Colonial oral histories of native cultures.
“They’ve been in our cycle of humanity for so long, but [modern] people just forgot about them,” he says. “My mission is to reintroduce the pawpaw into our culture again.”
Want to pick up Woodside Pawpaw trees, fruit, or jam? They will be vending at the Lewis Ginter Fall Plant Sale Sept. 15-16.
A note about consuming pawpaws: You eat the flesh, not the skin or the large, black seeds (which contain a toxic compound). Rinse the whole fruit, cut it in half and spoon out the creamy flesh, picking or spitting out seeds as you go. You can freeze the scooped flesh, too, if you want to save it.
Pawpaw Curd
2-3 ripe pawpaws, thoroughly peeled, seeds removed
4 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
Puree peeled and de-seeded pawpaw flesh in a food processor. Whisk pawpaw puree, eggs, sugar and lemon juice in a small or medium glass bowl until combined. Bring a pot of water of similar size to the mixing bowl to simmer and place the mixing bowl over the top, whisking the pawpaw mixture constantly. Scrape sides of the bowl often; do not stop whisking. Continue to cook and stir until the mixture begins to thicken noticeably, about 8-10 minutes. Remove mixture from heat and whisk in butter gradually until the mixture is glossy. Spoon the mixture into a room temperature bowl and press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the curd. Cool completely, transfer to a lidded container and chill. Pawpaw curd will keep for 2-3 weeks in the refrigerator.
