Praising PAWPAWS
LSU horticulturist promoting unique fruit for backyard gardeners
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You may not know what a pawpaw tree looks like or tasted its fruit, but you’ve probably heard the song.
“Pickin’ up pawpaws,
put ’em in your pockets,
way down yonder in
the pawpaw patch.”
LSU horticulturist Charlie Johnson would like to see pawpaws become as common as fig trees in backyard orchards. Toward that end, he held a little tasting party beside a grove of pawpaw trees at the Burden Research Center one morning last week.
The bridge is out just past the Burden administrative building so growers — amateurs and commercial — reached the orchard by a limestone road that winds through a palmetto woods.
Arriving at the orchard, Johnson, wearing a wide-brim straw hat, greeted the growers beside a tent where different varieties and selections of pawpaws had been sliced for tasting. A bucket of plastic spoons gave the tasting a Napa Valley flair.
A plant variety has a name and has been described in horticultural literature. A selection might one day become a variety but is still under investigation, Johnson said.
The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) goes by the common names Pawpaw, Paw Paw, Papaw, Poor Man’s Banana and Hoosier Banana, though it tastes more like papaya or mango than banana.
The American Indian may have been the first cultivator of pawpaw, spreading seed and transplants from the eastern United States to eastern Kansas and Texas and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The pawpaw, the largest edible fruit native to North America, is much in evidence in fossil records.
“The pawpaw is a unique fruit tree in that it is the only genus of the family Annonacae that grows in temperate zones,” Johnson said. “Most plants in this family are tropical.”
In East Baton Rouge Parish, you might find pawpaws in woodlands that haven’t been disturbed for a long time, Johnson said. Pawpaws in nature grow in deep shade in colonies of 10 or more trees.
“You might find them in a vacant lot somewhere,” Johnson said. “I find them in Kenilworth when I’m walking.”
At Burden, Johnson’s pawpaw orchard is three rows of 175 trees, seven or eight varieties and 25 selections. Seedlings are sensitive to sunlight, so Johnson starts his trees in the shade. The fast-growing trees can be moved into the sun after they reach a height of 2 feet.
The best way to start pawpaw is to get seed from a grower or look at nurseries that specialize in native trees.
Because it will tolerate shade and sunlight, the pawpaw with its drooping boughs and tropical-looking leaves makes a good landscaping tree, Johnson said.
“Deer don’t eat the leaves,” he said.
That’s important in subdivisions where deer are pests, but, remember, the horticulturist said deer don’t eat the LEAVES.
They, along with other wild animals, love the fruit and will eat it from the tree as well as from the ground where the ripe fruit ends up.
Jerry Dedon, of Walker, who’s retired from ExxonMobil and calls himself a “self-made horticulturist,” busied himself in the tasting tent.
Dedon has grafted 20 varieties of fruit trees to one tree which makes a pretty freaky looking citrus tree.
“There are lemons, satsumas, navel oranges, limequat, kumquat all on one tree,” Dedon said. “I just got to grafting and couldn’t quit.”
Vicky Ward, of Hattiesburg, Miss., has 50 acres of land she wants to turn into a mixed orchard. “Blueberries, figs, pawpaws. Pick your own, you know?”
Ward, whose family started a chain of restaurants in Mississippi called Ward’s, has a degree in horticulture from Mississippi State.
At 52, she’s looking to do something new. Her pick-your-own fruit orchard idea, she said, is part of something called “agri-tourism.”
She knew about Johnson’s taste test and pawpaw scion swap through the Southern Fruit Fellowship (http://www.nafex.org/sff.htm).
“Pickin’ up pawpaws,
put ’em in your pockets,
way down yonder in
the pawpaw patch.”
LSU horticulturist Charlie Johnson would like to see pawpaws become as common as fig trees in backyard orchards. Toward that end, he held a little tasting party beside a grove of pawpaw trees at the Burden Research Center one morning last week.
The bridge is out just past the Burden administrative building so growers — amateurs and commercial — reached the orchard by a limestone road that winds through a palmetto woods.
Arriving at the orchard, Johnson, wearing a wide-brim straw hat, greeted the growers beside a tent where different varieties and selections of pawpaws had been sliced for tasting. A bucket of plastic spoons gave the tasting a Napa Valley flair.
A plant variety has a name and has been described in horticultural literature. A selection might one day become a variety but is still under investigation, Johnson said.
The pawpaw (Asimina triloba) goes by the common names Pawpaw, Paw Paw, Papaw, Poor Man’s Banana and Hoosier Banana, though it tastes more like papaya or mango than banana.
The American Indian may have been the first cultivator of pawpaw, spreading seed and transplants from the eastern United States to eastern Kansas and Texas and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The pawpaw, the largest edible fruit native to North America, is much in evidence in fossil records.
“The pawpaw is a unique fruit tree in that it is the only genus of the family Annonacae that grows in temperate zones,” Johnson said. “Most plants in this family are tropical.”
In East Baton Rouge Parish, you might find pawpaws in woodlands that haven’t been disturbed for a long time, Johnson said. Pawpaws in nature grow in deep shade in colonies of 10 or more trees.
“You might find them in a vacant lot somewhere,” Johnson said. “I find them in Kenilworth when I’m walking.”
At Burden, Johnson’s pawpaw orchard is three rows of 175 trees, seven or eight varieties and 25 selections. Seedlings are sensitive to sunlight, so Johnson starts his trees in the shade. The fast-growing trees can be moved into the sun after they reach a height of 2 feet.
The best way to start pawpaw is to get seed from a grower or look at nurseries that specialize in native trees.
Because it will tolerate shade and sunlight, the pawpaw with its drooping boughs and tropical-looking leaves makes a good landscaping tree, Johnson said.
“Deer don’t eat the leaves,” he said.
That’s important in subdivisions where deer are pests, but, remember, the horticulturist said deer don’t eat the LEAVES.
They, along with other wild animals, love the fruit and will eat it from the tree as well as from the ground where the ripe fruit ends up.
Jerry Dedon, of Walker, who’s retired from ExxonMobil and calls himself a “self-made horticulturist,” busied himself in the tasting tent.
Dedon has grafted 20 varieties of fruit trees to one tree which makes a pretty freaky looking citrus tree.
“There are lemons, satsumas, navel oranges, limequat, kumquat all on one tree,” Dedon said. “I just got to grafting and couldn’t quit.”
Vicky Ward, of Hattiesburg, Miss., has 50 acres of land she wants to turn into a mixed orchard. “Blueberries, figs, pawpaws. Pick your own, you know?”
Ward, whose family started a chain of restaurants in Mississippi called Ward’s, has a degree in horticulture from Mississippi State.
At 52, she’s looking to do something new. Her pick-your-own fruit orchard idea, she said, is part of something called “agri-tourism.”
She knew about Johnson’s taste test and pawpaw scion swap through the Southern Fruit Fellowship (http://www.nafex.org/sff.htm).
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