Pennsylvania’s largest native fruit is ripe now, for just a few days

If you have a hankering for pawpaw – if you don’t, you’re in the majority who know little about the forgotten fruit – now is the time to head “way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.”

Pawpaws are the largest and most tropical fruit growing wild as a native tree in Pennsylvania. Each oblong fruit measures 3-5 inches long and weighs 6-12 ounces, with a light green skin with increasing black blemishes as it ripens.

The flesh of the ripe fruit, which is ripe for only a few days in mid- to late September and not palatable when it’s not ripe, has a unique flavor that’s described with comparisons to many other fruits and combinations of fruits but often note hints of banana, mango and pineapple.

In his book, Appalachian Home Cooking, Mark Sohn described the flavor as “forceful and distinct.”

Amid the custardy, sweet flesh of the pawpaw are the extraordinarily large, nutlike seeds. They are flat and range from 1-1.5 inches in length.

The pawpaw also is known as the Indian banana, Hoosier banana, Quaker delight, custard apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang, soursop or false banana.

Although many people have never encountered a pawpaw in Pennsylvania, the native range of the small tree extends throughout the eastern U.S., as far north as New York and west to Michigan and Kansas.

It grows to a maximum of 40 feet in height with drooping, 12-inch-long, oblong leaves and, in spring before the leaves appear, 2-inch purple flowers.

Those flowers have a scent that’s been compared to rotting meat and are pollinated by flies rather than bees.

The species does best in floodplains and bottomlands, under partial shade of taller trees, but not in total shade. It tends to grow in thickets, appearing a few years after an area where it occurs naturally has been clearcut.

Pawpaw is enjoying an increasing notoriety among wild food foraging enthusiasts and backyard orchardists. There are a few national suppliers of frozen pawpaw pulp and some small-scale commercial growers catering mostly to localized markets. The fruit almost never appears in grocery store produce aisles, and only briefly at some roadside stands and farmer’s markets.

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Researchers are working with the tree to determine if the problem of an incredibly short shelf-life for an easily bruised and damaged fruit can be overcome.

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You also can contact Schneck at mschneck@pennlive.com.