There are enough people growing pawpaws now that they will increasingly start showing up in farmer's markets over the next five years or so. The fourth generation of pawpaws (i.e. four generations improved from the prize-winning 1916 Ketter tree, which was selected from the wild) didn't start getting released until the mid 90s, and the fifth generation didn't start getting released until the mid 2010s. And it's at least decade between when a new cultivar gets release and when it's widely available to purchase, and then it takes another 5 - 7 years to grow to maturity after that. So it's really only within the last five years or so that it's even been possible to start growing commercial-quality fruit.
I started growing them in 2018, and even though that's not that long ago, the best cultivars you could get back then were complete garbage compared with what you can get today.
Do you have any recommendations about the newer variants and where to find them? A brief search turned up Peterson Pawpaw, but maybe you have others in mind.
If not, then Peaceful Heritage is very reputable, the main problem with them is that their grafted pawpaws only go on sale one day per year and are completely sold out in 20 minutes.
If you can't get from them, then your options are OneGreenWorld, StarkBros, and the other usual suspects.
Logees also sells Shenandoah and Susquehanna as a set for super cheap and they typically have a lot of inventory in the spring, so I'd recommend picking up those cultivars there and getting them shipped.
Also, Cliff England no longer ships trees, but still sells to customers that are willing to drive to KY: http://nuttrees.net/
I got mine from Edible Landscaping in Virginia. The owner is super friendly and very helpful. One of my grafted saplings died almost immediately after planting, and he replaced it no questions asked.
https://ediblelandscaping.com/collections/pawpaw
Just don't get NC-1, Mango, Rappahannock, Prolific, Overleese, Wells, or PA Gold.
Don't get me wrong, if you get one of those when they're perfectly ripe then it may well still be a completely life changing experience. But you can also do better, and given then you're going to have them for the next 25 years, it's worth doing the extra work to get the absolute best cultivars you can rather than just buying the first ones that are in stock, even if it takes an extra year to get started.
Agreed, wife and I planted a hobby orchard, hoping in a few years we'll be able to at least enjoy enough for ourselves, and eventually do some commercial production.
Papaya is also called the same in some other countries. It is usually spelled papaya but pronunciation varies and I believe it is sometimes spelled pawpaw too.
I had never heard of the American pawpaw before and my initial reaction was that it was reasonably commonly available.
Mamão are the same as sapotes probably, the family of bubble gum tree. Sapotes or zapotes are also said to be very good fruits. They share the 'icecream' texture with pawpaw.
So the Annonaceous acetogenins are what's called mitochondrial complex I inhibitors. Basically the way they work is they cause a buildup of radical oxides within your mitochondria, which decrease how efficient your mitochondria are at producing energy. In small doses, this is probably a good thing -- you give your mitochondria a good workout, and then eventually some antioxidants clear out the radical oxides and your mitochondria end up stronger than before. But in sufficiently large doses, you will start killing off your mitochondria, and if you kill enough (likely over several decades) it will cause something called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which is fatal.
The good news is that there is only one recorded case in history of someone who is suspected to have gotten PSP from eating pawpaws, a grower in New Jersey. The acetoenins in pawpaws have a fairly low bioavalability, so it's probably only a significant risk if you are 1) eating large quantities 2) doing something to increase the bioavailability of the acetogenins, e.g. cooking them with fat or maybe mixing them with alcohol.
If you eat moderate quantities out of hand, then most likely you are just reducing your cancer and diabetes risk, without taking on any increased risk of PSP. And since cancer and diabetes kill hundreds of times more people than PSP, overall eating them out of hand is almost certainly a net positive for your health -- especially when you compare them with the health effects of ice cream or whatever other dessert you'd have otherwise have been eating in their place.
That said, the cultivars that are specifically known to be low in acetogenins are: Sunflower, Wabash, Potomac, Zimmerman, Wells, Mango, Shenandoah.
Of these, the ones that are actually good are Wabash, Shenandoah, Sunflower, and Potomac. So if you just want to grow cultivars low in acetogenins, grow at least two of those four.
wow, thanks for the thorough reply. Atlanta's pawpaw population is taking off and they're fun to introduce to people, but I've been hesitant to do so more lately knowing that they may not be 100% good for you. seems like it's actually not so bad in moderation.
Yeah my personal rule of thumb is not to eat more than two per day and six per week, and to periodically check Google Scholar for new research. If you're going to cook with them, I'd recommend sticking to recipes that involve adding them to cooked food (e.g. as a layer on top of a cheesecake) rather than applying heat directly to them. And also to eat them only during the month or so per year that they're in season, rather than freezing them and eating them year round.
And if you haven't already seen it, here are Neal Peterson's recommendations for safe consumption:
His recommendations are notable mainly because he's the one who kickstarted the pawpaw renaissance and released many of the most popular (and best) cultivars on the market today.
Parents eat it at least once a week. They have a tree that bears so such it broke it's head off due to the load once when I was over there.The tree are hallow and not terribly strong.
I think you're safe.
> cooking them with fat or maybe mixing them with alcohol.
Taking notes carefully, thanks
> the ones that are actually good are Wabash, Shenandoah, Sunflower, and Potomac
Well's delight is a four of five stars so, over average. Shenandoah that tastes like a banana is maybe a 4.5. Sunflower (said to have also a bland banana taste) could be maybe a 3.5.
but it depends a lot of the ripeness, the number of fruits in the tree (Prolific by comparison is a 'one star over five', but... lots of fruits) and the personal taste. Ripeness is a trait that is tricky to realize. As a rule of thumb, if it has black spots is overripe.
The fruit can taste like a mix of caramel, vanille, bubblegum, pineapple, banana and poison (if overripe or wild variety). More or less depending on the variety.
To me the wild ones generally taste like a mix of unripe pear and diesel fuel. Extremely unpleasant, so it's no wonder that so many people who have tried pawpaws think they don't like them.
I'm not familiar with DNP, I'd have to look into it more. I have read a lot of the research on metformin, because that is also suspected to act like a mitochondrial complex I inhibitor in some circumstances. (Although it seems to act different ways in different situations, so no one really knows what's going on there yet.) But regardless, Peter Attia considered metformin to be a longevity drug (at least before he decided it might be hurting his muscle growth), so there may be a lot of precedent for using mitochondrial complex I inhibitors for health benefits, assuming metformin actually has that mechanism of action.
Art DeVany in his book, "The New Evolutionary Diet".
States that almost all plant foods contain some toxins. A solution he provides is that we should always eat a variety of plant foods, i.e change plant food almost every meal.
That way, your body never accumulates any single toxin in large or dangerous quantities.
Was the book better than your advice? Because that is pretty generic advice that has the potential to be dangerous(Chem engineer here). Don't eat the cancerous part of the vegetable EVER.
Sure I know of anti-nutrients, but reading more about this guy, seems like its just a rando's opinion. I'll take the rat studies please.
3 sentences can never fully fully depict what someone has written in an entire book of hundreds of pages. So I understand how you might have misinterpreted my statement.
I did not say that you should go out & proactively eat cancerous foods.
The book is a very practical book, my only regret is not having bought it earlier.
You should follow the strategy in consuming a variety of plant foods because.
a) It is practically impossible to know the toxins in all plants and thus avoid them proactively.
b) Like I said, almost all plant foods contain some toxins.
So either;
- you starve,
- you build up unhealthy toxins by eating the same plant foods daily
- or you can have many toxins at very (harmless) low levels. By constantly switching your plant food consumption.
DeVany's books is really good. If you like "rat studies" you will definitely like it.
This is pretty uncontroversial advice. In ecology, it's called being a "generalist". (And humans are generalists.)
If you want to avoid all toxins ever, you'll have to avoid... basically all food. Oxalic acid, cyanogenic glycosides, etc. are just freaking everywhere. Plants make defense compounds; we're able to handle small amounts of them.
Man, hadn't heard that name in a while. Looks like he's still around. His twitter points to his homepage, but that looks to have been taken over by someone with the same name. All of his stuff must be on facebook now, shame.
Yes, some have less acetogenins than other. "Wells" for example. This trait is consistent inside the cultivar and between years.
It came with a more bland, less complex flavor (probably). Susquehanna has a high level of acetogenins but it ranks often among the top cultivars on flavor. Overleese also has a high acetogenin level
I tried them when I was living in Ohio and they had the Pawpaw festival.
Not my thing. The ones I had fresh were too weird tasting for me. I did like some of the secondary products like beer or other things made from them, but the fruit themselves, nah.
If they can get them to where other people that like them get to enjoy them though, that's cool.
The went to the pawpaw festival for the first time this year. It was pretty fun!! Definitely worth checking out if you’re already in the area (not far from Athens/Hocking Hills)
Agreed with what the others said. Kind of like a custard when ripe.
But, what I didn't like was it was overwhelmingly like the worst parts of the flavor of banana, amplified. Maybe it was the ones that I tried and there are other varieties, but that overwhelming banana flavor was what I disliked. Stronger than your regular bananas.
Pawpaw is just a papaya, right? If so and you decide to give it another try, try putting some fresh lime/lemon juice (half by half, not either/or) into the crater left by removing the seeds.
I also didn't like them, but now I can't wait for them to show up (there are seasonal in the supermarkets here).
The pawpaw referred to here is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, producing a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit.
The papaya, whilst also sometimes being called a pawpaw, has been available commercially for some time in the US, and is not what is being referred to here.
They are on a different family. Pawpaw is a northern cousin of the Cherimoya (that also has acetogenins, but is in every supermarket). The tropical Soursop has even more and nobody cares (tip: They should. Anybody visiting Latinoamerica should be aware of it. The family has a lot of delicious fruits).
The real problem is the dull aspect (like a greyish-green potato) and short shelf life of paw paw.
This lack of availability in supermarkets reminds me of gooseberries. Lovely fruit to bake with or just eat, but apparently not economically viable to have them in stores even during their season. I have a shrub in my backyard, but it doesn't yield much more than a handful.
Regarding why we don't see them in stores, in part I think that's related to them being perishable but also because gooseberries and currants were both banned in the USA until 1966 because it carried a disease that hurt the white pine tree.
Maybe but they've been around in Europe for a long time and (as far as I know) have never been banned anywhere over here. They still aren't commonly seen in supermarkets anywhere in Europe I've been or lived (you sometimes see them in farmers markets and the like) so I think growing them commercially generally just isn't worth it.
They're just not used a lot, at least in the UK, so they'll appear in supermarkets occasionally (perhaps only once/season) as a limited batch. Otherwise you could get them at the market or a 'pick your own' farm which (IME at least) tend to have more berry varieties than anywhere else.
If they were more widely available they'd certainly be used more. There's no shortage of rhubarb in supermarkets when it's in season, and gooseberries can be used in a lot of the same dishes (crumbles, fools, stewed etc). However gooseberries can also be used for lots of berry dishes. There's definitely a market.
Are you fertilizing? I have one in a pot that yields probably 200 berries per year. The issue is the thorns. I bought a couple thornless varieties last year. Hopefully will get some fruit this year from those.
> By the time I arrived at Brooklyn’s Park Slope farmers’ market in search of a pawpaw one morning last week, it was already too late: The weird green fruit had sold out within an hour. “You have to get here early,” Jeff Rowe of Orchard Hill Organics, the market’s lone pawpaw vendor, told me.
> [...] Rowe, the farmers' market vendor, said he's constantly selling out of pawpaws.
A flood of customers visiting your stall in the hopes of buying an elusive pawpaw may well be more profitable overall than a steady trickle of customers willing to pay the market-clearing price. C.f. the crazed crowds of bargain hunters on Black Friday, or the abundance of artificial scarcity in the premium sneaker and streetwear market.
The sort of pricing and supply irregularities that lead to queues and scalpers and hype are frequently rational for the seller, precisely because of the irrationality of buyers.
They’re highly perishable, available in small quantities and wildly seasonal. The seller likely needs to drive motivated buyers to their cart, fast and predictably, to make the foraging worthwhile. That unfortunately means pricing in a shortage. This is why the scientists are trying to breed a version that is less perishable, producible in larger quantities or growable more predictably.
> They’re highly perishable, available in small quantities and wildly seasonal.
And there is apparently demand for them, which overall means they should indeed be relatively expensive.
If sellers need to "drive motivated buyers to their carts" by selling cheap for such a troublesome product then in a developed country they will probably just not sell it because it isn't worthwhile.
> By the time I arrived at Brooklyn’s Park Slope farmers’ market in search of a pawpaw one morning last week, it was already too late: The weird green fruit had sold out within an hour. “You have to get here early,” Jeff Rowe of Orchard Hill Organics, the market’s lone pawpaw vendor, told me.
And
> They’re highly perishable, available in small quantities and wildly seasonal.
Hence my previous comment, so I don't understand yours...
And beyond pricing strategy, there are people who feel that a fair price is intrinsic to the product (e.g. the amount of work that goes into it). For example, it's pretty common in the classical guitar luthier world for there to be a decade-plus waiting list for some masters. They refuse to scale up their prices to “market-level” (i.e. a couple years max, takes months to build a guitar), because they don't want the guitars going to someone for purely economic reasons. Mind you, these are still very expensive, five figure instruments.
(edit: you could obviously think of it as a strategy that maximizes some other utility function in which profit is just one parameter)
Nope. A seller can choose to sell below the market price, thereby inducing a shortage. In this case, it’s unclear the seller could predictably clear this perishable stock at a higher price.
It looks like you are talking past each other with one referring to something like the price on the tag and another talking of the most profitable price.
> one referring to something like the price on the tag and another talking of the most profitable price
Market versus negotiated price. The market price is not controlled by a non-monopoly seller or non-monopsony buyer. That doesn’t preclude someone being convinced, in exchange for a bulk order, long-term commitment (formally or informally), out of sympathy, or a bribe or because a participant is misinformed or an idiot, to sell off market at a different negotiated price.
Taking into account cost of selling (their time) may be a factor.
I would prefer to sell for 1000$ in 1 hour over selling for 1100$ over 10 hours.
assuming production and transport costs at 500$, and 0% taxes it is leaving with 400$ vs 480$ profit, making it a clearly good idea if you value your time at more than 8.89$/h. And it does not take into account promotion/building consumer loyalty.
(obviously real world has many more factors, like selling also other products which may limit time saving and add chance for crossselling stuff)
Ok so perhaps it's passion for growing pawpaws: sell better and that's more revenue to grow the operation. Perhaps it's living more comfortably, working to live not living to work etc.: sell higher at fewer markets, grow/pick less.
It may come as a shock to you, but I'm not a SV startup guy, and my own employment is certainly not income-maximised.
I think the perishability and extreme difficulty of handling these like other produce makes them a special treat. They're good. A mild, banana-like flavor with vanilla overtones. I would not say pineapple like the article, that's too acidic.
A friend recently mentioned to me that there are pawpaws in a park near our house in DC. According to him, someone may have planted them and now they are growing wild. It seems odd that this fruit would grow in the woods since there isn't much sunlight there. I will have to go check it out (when they are in season I guess?).
They are natives to all of Virginia and they are shade loving trees. They actually prefer shade as young trees and not until they are fully mature can then tolerate sun.
Source, lived in VA for a decade, hunting for wild pawpaws and growing my own trees. Before we moved out of the state we had a pawpaw "collection" of about fifty (ten we owned, approx forty we found in the national forest and harvested yearly).
Yep. Here in Richmond they grow everywhere along the Janmes River Trail System.
Unfortunately, their popularity in the last few years has caused them to be over harvested by people selling them. Additionally, they taste the very best right after falling to the ground naturally but lots of folks keep trying to knock them or shake or climb the trees way to early in the season causing a lot of damage to the trees.
Yes they are all over the place around DC. Go to Carderock in September, you'll find them if you're looking for them. You'll also probably find a bunch of other people foraging for them.
I spent 20y in the woods in Fairfax and Prince William counties. Never ran across it. Only edibles I recall were persimmon, raspberries, blackberries & a wild strawberry. Also osage orange for whatever they were good for.
Yep, and there's plenty of other produce around the USA that doesn't ship well but is available if you look. Here in upstate NY we get all kinds of apples that nobody
ships, and the little rural farmers markets have all sorts of weird gems they can't mass produce but make plenty of for the small towns and restaurants nearby. (Of course Asian and Hispanic grocery stores always carry "exotic" options too, but if they're not in a NYTimes thinkpiece white people won't try them)
On top of that, they're kind of a pain to eat. They have a bunch of large seeds inside, so the amount of edible fruit flesh isn't that much. I think commercial fruits tend to be much easier to eat than this.
But yeah, they don't store well either. I've kept them in my refrigerator, but they don't store that long there, unlike apples for instance. Bananas don't store well either, but they're really, really easy to eat, unlike pawpaws.
I enjoyed picking and eating them when I lived in a place with them: it's fun being able to eat fruit that you picked yourself out in the woods. But if it were sold in stores, I doubt I'd buy it very often.
People deal OK with mangos, rambutan, and pomegranates -- those are all heavily seeded or complicated to eat, but they show up in grocery stores. I think the storage and shipping is the main issue.
Tried cardoon for the first time this year, from a nearby food forest. It was great, I’d really recommend, and it’s still surviving in the lot when everything else has succumbed to a very wet Dutch winter.
Cardoons are one of the things on my "bucket list of foods I've never tried", and reading you mention this makes me wonder why they aren't grown in the US. Or if they are, why they don't get distributed?
Food "prevalence" in general is mysterious to me. It seems to me there are a lot of foods that could be more widespread but aren't for historical or quirky reasons. Pawpaws seem to be one of many similar examples.
They're not incredibly productive - I had two or three one time and we never ate them because it just seemed like a lot of work (to prepare them) for not much food (and you would have been hard pressed to get more than one or two full leaves per plant per week or so). Whereas strawberries, herbs, peppers, and citrus just needed to be washed, cut, and eaten.
Thanks, I probably won't bother then - I have no ability with plants and I don't think that's likely to change. It was just my stomach that made me write that :)
Because it has a very short shelf life and is not easy to figure out when is ripe. It just pass from green to gray-green, then it develops ugly black spots and soon after that starts getting bitter, and is too late.
Still waiting for my lazy trees to do anything. I culture four varieties and they are notoriously unable to pollinate themselves without a second tree of other variety close. Last time it was... almost, but slugs.
I heard a tale of native Americans extracting a psychedelic from the seed pods. Anyone else heard the same, or have a recipe/technique to share? BTW, ripe pawpaw is like the second best thing you'll have in your mouth atmo
Comprises also the Ylang-Ylang (fragrance) and also a lot of other tropical fruits. Most of them recognizable easily by having a skin sculpted with "scaly" marks, or thorns like a pineapple: Sugar apple, soursop, sweetsop, Atemoya, also a genus in temperate areas, Asimina.
- Asimina genus: Comprises several US natives of fruit trees. Asimina triloba (Paw paw), is the most famous and looks just like a smooth potato. no scales here.
Caricaceae. Family of the Papaya. Trees with leaves arranged around a soft trunk like a palm, fruits with soft skin, shaped like a fig or a pumpkin. Comprises:
It seems to be an elusive fruit in America. It is however a very common fruit in Spain (Chirimoya) and you will find it in all supermarkets - it is not particularly expensive. Orchards are in southern Spain and canary islands.
Same family, different genus (Annona and Asimina). They can't be grafted together. Are compatible at first, but grafts can't survive at long term
Cherimoya (and Atemoya, etc) are often placed among the royalty of fruits. If they are ripe, they are really good. Overripe... not so much. Develop an acrid aftertaste that is a clear warning.
It’s interesting that this fruit is coming up again - I feel like it had a moment already back around 2016. Maybe that was just a bubble I was in though.
Definitely recommend trying one if you get the chance.
I have a rapidly spreading pawpaw patch in Massachusetts. I live in a wet area and they are thriving to the point that I need to cull new trees that are invading my other gardens. I have taken to selling the fruit and surplus seedlings on Craigslist. 2022 was a bumper crop but a late frost in 2023 killed many of the flowers and I barely harvested a bushel of fruit. I believe that the shifting climate has made this area nearly ideal for them to spread naturally.
> This article is about the common pawpaw of eastern North America. For the unrelated tropical papaya fruit often called 'papaw' or 'pawpaw', see Carica papaya.
aye, never been to a latin market -- in australia, the US, or canada -- that didn't have guava. usually the actual fruit, but failing that like 5+ different versions of juice, paste, etc.
DIY guava rum is pretty good btw. literally guava (or paste), vanilla bean, and the cheapest rum you can get.
The real question is why are sepote fruit so hard to come by? They're absolutely amazing. One single niche vendor at my farmers market grows and sells them. It's a tragedy.
Most of them are strictly tropical. Only white sapotes and black sapotes (really a persimmon, but with bland so-so flavor) can grow on temperate areas.
There are a lot of awesome tropical fruits that nobody knows out of its distribution area (Some of us would culture it furiously otherwise, LOL)
Did you mean Sapote? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapote
Actually there are lots of fruits called Sapote that are not the same fruit. Which of all Sapotes is your Sapote?
It's strange there's three different fruits called a pawpaw. The Pawpaw/Carica papaya (called Papaya in North America), the Mountain Pawpaw/Vasconcellea pubescens, and the American Pawpaw/Asimina triloba (which this article is about).
It would seem you probably don't see these in Germany.
Except that we also see the occasional NFL season game in the stadium, why not an Indiana banana too? In these days of international logistics, it seems anything is possible. :-)
Always amused at HN posts where the country being referred to is left out the title and it's always America.
The USA population is only 4.23% of the world :)
This must be one of the most little bourgeoisie/urban nouveau rich/hipster things I've read in a long while.
The kind of thing that makes you want to read the Communist Manifesto furiously to cleanse your eyes of all this pretense sophistication and frivolity.
My favorite article like this featuring the Park Slope Co-op was the author opining on if it’s ok that members were sending their house cleaners to work their mandatory 2-hour quarterly shift.
On the other hand I'm grateful to live in a society during a time when this is attainable and not particularly uncommon. When layer after layer of problem is already solved (you can even have "the help" put in your mandatory 2-hours since it interferes with yoga time or your brunch, it's time for you, girlfriend!) I guess there's worse things than going ape over relatively rare fruit.
They can definitely be readily found in South-Eastern Ohio grocery stores during season, and more sparingly grocery stores around all of Ohio - typically lesser-greater the distance from SEO.
Probably not going to find them in many chains outside of SEO, more likely in boutique markets.
I started growing them in 2018, and even though that's not that long ago, the best cultivars you could get back then were complete garbage compared with what you can get today.