ISSUE 32, NATIVE FRUITS, Part 6: Paw Paw
Paw Paw
For half a century Americans cultivated a terror of dyspepsia. Indigestion boded debility, and eventually, death. The causes were myriad: raw foods, adulterated products, beans, cooked cabbage. In truth, it was a panic without much reason. The chemistry of the gut was only dimnly known by biologists and the microbiome entirely undetected. What the 1800s did have were numbers of public authorities who had a cure, usually in the form of a purchasable bottle. The first large scale commercial exploitation of North America’s Native Paw Paw was in one such remedy: “Munyon’s Paw-Paw. It was a digestant and tonic rolled into one.
“I urge upon brain-workers particularly the use of Paw-Paw. It will immediately give tone and energy to the whole nervous system. If the toiler who feels the need of a stimulant will step into the nearest drug store and ask for Paw-Paw, he will have no further use for whiskey, beer or other stimulants.” [“Doctors Prescribe Munton’s Paw Paw,” San Antonio Express (February 6, 1904), 3.]
There was something about the semi-tropical flavor of the Paw Paw—its hints of mango, citrus, banana, custard apple—that suggested its tropical acidity would aid the stomach in its cooking of the things we eat. On a generational cycle (1910s, 1940s, 1970s) pomologists and growers selected and bred strains, attempting to distribute good quality fruit trees, and never quite succeeding in their campaign. In the Midwest the Paw Paw grows wild. In some areas of Nebrasks, Missouri, Ohio, they grow profusely.
If you plant a sapling Paw Paw from one of the select lines, it will begin to bear in five years after growing five feet tall. Though self-fertile, it is best to have other trees in the vicinity to pollinate it, because the production is much greater. The trees are difficult to transplant. They are pollinated by common carrion flies. Hence the recent practice of hanging decomposing meat in groves. Planting paw paw seeds and hoping for germination can be a frustrating endeavor, for they often don’t sprout. This is because seed savers let the seeds dry out. They must be kept moist. Hence the practice of storing them in plastic bags with sphangum moss. One’s best bet in establishing a grove is to purchase sprouted seedlings from a nursery and plant them.
While the fruit has traditionally been the attractor of Paw Paw, the discovery in the mid 1980s by Purdue researchers Kenneth Mikolajczak and Jerry L McLaughlin that the bark contained chemicals that killed insects (Mexican bean beetles, melon aphids, blowfly, and nematodes). Indeed the efficacy of the natural compounds in Paw Paw parked exceeded that of synthetic commercial pesticides. [Mark Lamber, “Paw Paw Tree Bark Holds Key to Biodegradable Pesticides,” Peoria Journal Star (June 14, 1988), 12.]
The Asimina family of shrubs of which the Paw Paw Asimina triloba has eight species that range for the most part in Florida up to southeastern Virginia. Many share the maroon blossoms (white is the next most frequent) of the Paw Paw but produce inedible fruit. Only the triloba is cold tolerant, edible, and possessed of beautiful foliage.
The varieties that were maintained in the 20th century tended to be selections from wild trees with little effort at clonal propagation and variety consolidaton. The most reputable varieties—Sunflower, Davis, and Overleese—were sole by few nurseries. The Overleese, developed in Indiana circa 1950, was known for the heftiness of its fruit. The Sunflower won a following because of its prolific cropping.
The factors that have inhibitted the commercial exploitation of the Paw Paw—the fruit’s tendency to bruise during transport—the short season of ripening—and the rapidity with which it spoils have all been overcome for other fruits and vegetables. The problem now appears to be the inefficiency of growers in the arrangement and harvesting of their fruit.