The Pawpaw Tree

a tree with four seasons of interest

Walk along the Bluff Trail at the Overland Park Arboretum and you will see thousands of Pawpaw trees (Asimina triloba). If you are there in mid-April to early May you will see beautiful purple flowers hanging from the branches of the trees just as the leaves begin to emerge. In late summer to early fall there will be yellowish-green to brown fruit on the tree.

Then in October you will be treated to a seemingly never-ending view of beautiful yellow leaves under the canopy of the other trees along the trail.

The Pawpaw looks like a tropical plant, largely because of its upto-one-foot long, drooping pearshaped leaves. You might even wonder if a tropical tree could be growing in Kansas. There are over 100 members of the Annonaceae (Custard-apple) family and virtually all are tropical or subtropical in their distribution. The Pawpaw, however, is native over the eastern one-third of Kansas and much of eastern North America, growing in bottomlands and along creeks as an under-story tree.

The tree is small to medium sized, typically growing to 15-20 feet, and is the primary food source and home for the beautiful zebra swallowtail butterfly (Eurytides marcellus). In the wild, the Pawpaw spreads by root suckers forming colonies or thickets – remember the song “Way Down Yonder In The Pawpaw Patch?” It can be grown in the landscape as a small ornamental tree with one or two stems if properly pruned while the tree is young.

Attractive cup-shaped purple flowers with six petals, two tiers of three petals each, emerge in the spring, just as the leaves begin to appear. Each flower contains both male and female parts (monoecious). Carrion flies and scavenger beetles pollinate the flowers, typically by cross-pollination from a nearby tree.

The fruit of the Pawpaw is technically classified as a berry (fruit that is fleshy or pulpy throughout, develops from a single flower with a single ovary and has two or more seeds – tomatoes and bananas are berries).

Pawpaw flowers give way to the fruits, large bean-shaped and yellow-green that turn dark brown to black when ripe. They are the largest berries produced by any of our native trees, frequently reaching six inches in length. Sometimes the fruits develop in clusters like bananas, and indeed they are similar to very ripe bananas. When opened the fruit contains a fleshy pulp of creamy banana custardlike consistency and several large seeds in a row. They are tasty to most humans. The fruit is rich in Vitamin C, fiber, antioxidants and a number of other beneficial elements. Squirrels, raccoons and opossum must know this, as they also love the fruit of this interesting tree.

JIM EARNEST Local Plantsman

Jim Earnest, is on the Education Committee at the Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens and a long-time member of Kansas Native Plant Society.