Your Guide to Pawpaws, a Tropical-Tasting Fruit in Pittsburgh

Pawpaw fans love the fruit’s custardy, tropical notes of mango and banana — definitely not the flavors you expect to grow in Appalachia. But if you haven’t tasted it before, there’s a pretty good reason why. They have too short of a shelf life to meet market demands, and there aren’t as many trees as there used to be, mostly due to industry. But the fruit’s brief season and scarce nature is arguably what makes it so special — especially when you get to know its story of survival.

How Long Have Pawpaws Been Here?

Pawpaws, or Asimina triloba, have supported cultures for millennia and play an important role in Indigenous foodways. Iroquois people mix them into sauces and corn cakes, Cherokee people use the tree fibers in the inner bark to make rope and string, and the Shawnee Tribe, which marks time by phases of the moon, named one of those phases after the pawpaw. The Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Avella, Pa., the oldest site of human habitation in North America, even found fossils of pawpaws.

Where Can You Find Pawpaw Trees?

Pittsburgh is on the edge of the native range; pawpaws can grow in the deep South, Mid-Atlantic, and all the way up to the Ohio River Valley. The trees mainly grow in the understory of woods, but they’re often called a “river fruit” because they thrive along waterways. If you want to go foraging, here is a map of some of the suspected places in Pittsburgh.

How Can I Taste a Pawpaw?

Grow Pittsburgh is hosting Paw Paw Parties at Garden Dreams in Wilkinsburg on Sept. 12 and 19. Gabrielle Marsden will share how pawpaw trees are linked to the beautiful zebra swallowtail butterfly.

Or if you’re up for a little road trip, check out these regional festivals:

If you want to be a pawpaw nerd like me, buy local author Andrew Moore’s book “Pawpaw, In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit.”