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A taste of the tropics

The pawpaw tree seems out of place in Kansas, but for some the fruit hits home.

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BY MICHAEL PEARCE

The Wichita Eagle

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PAWPAW FACTS

* The first reference to pawpaws was from DeSoto's 1541 expedition in the Mississippi Valley. It was a valued food at the time. Lewis and Clark also relied heavily on pawpaws early in their travels.

* Chilled pawpaws was a favored dessert of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

* Pawpaw is the only member of its plant family not found in the tropics.

* Growing to lengths of up to 8 inches, pawpaws are the largest fruit native to the continental U.S.

* Pawpaw trees are easily identified by their big, oblong leaves. The leaves turn yellow in the early fall, making the trees much easier to find.

* The trend towards organic food is bringing renewed interest in pawpaws. The plants have virtually no pests and don't require pesticides.

* Pawpaws are hard to cultivate because their delicate root system and are hard to transplant. Once ripe, the fruit has a very short shelf life before it begins to ferment.

* Pawpaws take on an unappetizing brown color and become mushy when ripe.

* Pawpaws are pollinated by flies and certain beetles, hence the blossoms carry an odor of rotten meat to attract them. Growers sometimes hang meat or spray a tree with fish scents to help attract insects to encourage pollination.

* For a look at paw-paw recipes, go to www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/recipes.htm

ELK COUNTY — Greg Pickett spends a lot of his fall as a bowhunter, sitting in trees and looking toward the ground.

Last Sunday morning, he spent an hour on the ground looking into the treetops for pawpaws.

"Look at all of them up here, this tree's loaded," Pickett said. Seconds later, he gave the stout sapling a few hard shakes and green fruit the size of small potatoes rained down around him.

"It's amazing, but most people don't know anything about these," he said, testing a pawpaw's ripeness. "I've been picking pawpaws most of my life. I love to eat them. I think they're danged good."

Pawpaws, also spelled "papaws," are found over much of the eastern United States, roughly from the eastern one-third of Kansas and Oklahoma to the Atlantic.

The El Dorado Lake area seems to be about the westernmost population.

Kelly Kindscher, a Kansas Biological Survey botanist, said the plants are one of the most unusual native to Kansas.

"It's a kind of tropical plant with these huge, tropical-looking leaves and bizarre, banana-looking fruit," Kindscher said. "In the spring they have these reddish flowers that seem out of place."

Preferred pawpaw habitat is in the understory of tall forests, where the soil is mostly damp and shaded.

Their leaves are among the largest in Kansas, often a foot in length and five or six inches wide.

Pawpaw trees normally range from 10 to 50 or more feet tall and grow in colonies.

Pickett was amid a colony that his family has picked from since his grandfather bought the farm in the early 1950s.

"I guess they hadn't been here too long when grandpa came in one day and said he had some trees that were growing little watermelons," Pickett said. "Grandma knew they were pawpaws. "I've always looked forward to this time of the year because they're getting ripe."

Pickett showed how to get out-of-reach fruit from a tree. A few shakes of a tree's trunk normally dislodges any ripe fruit.

It wasn't uncommon for a tree in that particular grove to hold eight to 10 pawpaws. It's his best patch.

"This spot almost always has a lot of pawpaws, but they're not really big," he said. "I have another place where the trees are a lot bigger. The pawpaws are bigger, but there aren't nearly as many. And there are groves where you hardly ever find any pawpaws at all."

The trick last Sunday was to find pawpaws that were ripe enough to eat.

Pickett said they need to be soft to the touch. Many he picked last weekend will have to be allowed to ripen on his kitchen counter.

Eventually he found a five-inch pawpaw that was about as soft as a ripe pear.

He broke the fruit and squeezed both halves between his thumb and forefinger.

He put the yellowish, pudding-like pulp in his mouth. Seconds later, he spit the brown, dime-sized seeds.

"I guess some people don't like them, but they're pretty sweet to me," he said. "They kind of remind you of a banana."

Pickett has a friend who can make them into wine.

His wife, Amanda, substitutes pawpaws in banana bread recipes.

"It's really good," Pickett said. "But I really just enjoy picking them up and eating them."

He often puts a few in his pocket when he's heading to a tree stand or working cattle.

In the right place, he can collect a bunch in a hurry.

"Probably the best I've done is two five-gallon buckets in about 20 minutes," he said. "But I was really hurrying."

He'll also be hurrying to collect as many as he can from favorite pawpaw groves in the next week or so.

"You've got to get out here early and get them if you want very many," he said. "The hard part is beating the (raccoons), opossums and deer to them. About everything out here loves them, too."

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