Pawpaw

by Andrew Moore

  In addition to enlisted men from the US Army, the corps comprised “backwoodsmen” from Kentucky and Indiana, “skilled in hunting and outdoor life and used to hardship,” men who likely became “very fond of” pawpaw in their lives back home.2 They would have picked pawpaws from the forest floor, and shaken trees to let ripe fruit drop. Some may have brought fruit back to their boats; others would have feasted in the woods, breaking the fruit apart, squeezing to release the pulp. Seeds and skin discarded, they would have reached for more.

  Several days of slow going and warm weather followed. On Thursday, September 18, they met up with a team of hunters they had sent ahead, but who had killed nothing. “At 10 o’clock we came too and gathered pottows [pawpaws] to eate we having nothing but a fiew Buisquit to eat and are partly compelled to eate poppows which we find in great quantities on the Shores.” The heat continued unabated, but the relatively cool, oak-filled bottomlands offered a measure of relief. They saw few deer, one bear, and just three turkeys, but were able to kill none.

  “Our party entirely out of provisions subsisting on poppaws. We divided the busikit which amounted to one buisket per man, this in addition to the poppaws is to last us down to the Settlement’s which is 150 miles . . . the party appear perfectly contented and tell us they can live very well on the pappaws.”

  They traveled fifty-two miles that day. The next morning they descended the Missouri with great velocity and only came ashore once, again, for the “purpose of gathering pappaws.” Eager to reach the Illinois, they did not want to halt for hunting. And with pawpaws in such abundance, they didn’t need to. Eventually, they came upon a French village. Thanks to pawpaws, the brief hunger scare was over. On September 23, the corps reached St. Louis; the great expedition had ended.3

  In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) erected dozens of limestone structures at Fort Bellefontaine Park in north St. Louis. It was at this approximate location that the corps went ashore for one of many pawpaw-foraging excursions. The park was once a popular spot for picnicking and swimming, though its primary use today is as a residential youth facility called Missouri Hills Home. I’ve come here in mid-September—the same time of year the corps did more than two hundred years ago—to see if pawpaws are still growing, to see if I too can be “perfectly contented and . . . live very well on the pappaws.” WPA structures still abound, including bridges, culverts, a large bathhouse and other “comfort stations,” and an incredible, five-tiered Grand Staircase rising from the river’s banks to the high bluff where the corps camped twice, once in 1804, and again in 1806, just before the expedition concluded. Now in disrepair—not unlike a few other WPA structures and projects throughout the country—the stoneworks are encroached upon by the forest, lending the park a strange air of ruin, as if these buildings were built centuries ago, not mere decades, and are now being reclaimed by the landscape. Like the pawpaws I’m here to find, they’re devalued if not forgotten—but all still exist, still beautiful, still inviting use.

  I take the long hike to the Grand Staircase, walking first through the open prairie—a term the French gave to their meadows—mixed here with goldenrod, wild blue sage, milkweed, and flowers visited by orange and yellow butterflies. Unseen insects croak and chatter everywhere around me. It’s ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit, a sixty-five-year record high for St. Louis. Fields eventually give way to the forest edge and a trail along Coldwater Creek. An information kiosk shows an illustration of fossils of the giant beaver, twice the size of our modern Castor canadensis, which once lived here, and may have been one of the now-extinct mammals that ate pawpaws. A few ailanthus and mulberry trees have begun to colonize the grasses; dense honeysuckle vines crowd the understory. The woods are filled with sassafras, persimmon, redbud, black walnut, box elder, and oaks. But in other patches, Japanese honeysuckle is the only plant in the understory. Here, the forest—not just the limestone structures and manicured lawns—would be unrecognizable to Lewis and Clark, and to the Osage and the Kansas tribes they met near here.

  I can hear Coldwater Creek through the dense stands of honeysuckle. Crouching below its vine-like branches, I inch toward the source. There’s an odd abandoned building—perhaps a former comfort station or picnic shelter—its roof long gone. But around the limestone walls grow pawpaws. I shake the skinny trees and listen for dropping fruit. A tiny pawpaw falls onto a bed of leaves. I take it with me to the creek. The pulp is bright yellow. It has a good creamy texture but is a bit too bitter for my taste. I walk the creekbed, which is lined with steep, natural stone walls. Boulders create a path through the water. A belted kingfisher swoops and dives past me repeatedly, looking for a snack of its own.

  I continue walking, alternating between the creekbed and the raised trail. Berry-flecked spicebush becomes abundant in the understory, and then so do pawpaws. They’re everywhere. I’m drawn into a grove with at least a dozen trees, each more than thirty feet in height. I wonder if these were planted, or if this is the site of an old Indian orchard. And then I remember how much time has passed since these specific lands were occupied by Native Americans. Even the idea that this is a settler’s orchard would be a stretch. Yet this grove is unique, almost savanna-like. I pick fruit off the ground; there might not be enough for an entire crew, but there’s enough for me. Perhaps if I looked harder, and if my survival depended on it, I could find dozens more (and if my survival depended on this one fruit, I certainly wouldn’t complain of bitterness). As I continue my walk, the path is lined with pawpaw, shagbark hickory, and vigorous grapevines. A lone squirrel darts ahead of me. Like the corps, I don’t see much game. Though I’m not actively hunting, the squirrel is the only mammal I spot all day.

  Following the creek leads me to the Missouri. It is massive, carrying rainfall from the Rockies and various Canadian streams. Within the river are islands of sediment and rock, fallen cottonwoods and piled sand. The Missouri was once forded by herds of bison, a life source to native peoples for at least twelve thousand years, and carried French and Spanish explorers, Lewis and Clark, and subsequent American settlers as a gateway to the West. During all that time pawpaws have thrived here.

  A few yards from the riverbank is a bathhouse, now in ruins. The roof is gone but the structure is shaded still by the large-leafed canopy of more than a dozen pawpaw trees; they’re everywhere, in fact, ascending the steep hillside.

  Finally I arrive at the Grand Staircase. At the base, a shirtless man repeatedly lifts a large rock over his head. His dust-covered mountain bike leans against the limestone. He says he’s just getting in his daily exercise. In a moment he tears down the trail, pedaling along the path from which I’ve just come. I climb the five tiers of the Grand Staircase, past empty pools and fallow planters, to the top of the bluff. The view of the river from here, befitting the staircase’s title and size, is impressive. A few yards away, plaques mark the corps’ two campsites here. Just down the path, teenagers are carrying furniture from a pickup truck into one of several dormitories on the grounds. I rest for a moment and eat one of the pawpaws I’ve collected. This one is not bitter, but sweet and watery. It’s good. For all that has surely changed in this landscape, much has remained, not the least of which are the navigable waters of the Missouri itself, ahead of me in constant motion, and the sweet fruit of wild pawpaws, “of which this country abounds . . . which we find in great quantities on the Shores.”

  — CHAPTER FOURTEEN —

  HISTORIC VIRGINIA

  Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello offers an unparalleled view of central Virginia: the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Piedmont, and nearby Charlottesville, home to Jefferson’s other great architectural achievement, the University of Virginia. In between all of those sites, in the woods and along creeks and rivers, pawpaws abound.

  Thomas Jefferson is rumored—as is frequently stated in news articles describing the fruit—to have believed that pawpaws had potential under cultivation. It’s a feather in the cap of toda
y’s pawpaw’s promoters: Jefferson’s involvement validates their own claims of its merit.

  Lewis and Clark’s story of subsisting on pawpaws alone for three days may have been of interest to Jefferson, but it’s unlikely that it would have been his first introduction to the fruit. The country of Jefferson’s youth was filled with wild pawpaws. Later in life, records he kept (and he was meticulous, even obsessive about keeping records) show Asimina triloba as having been planted on his estate. Jefferson also sent pawpaw seeds to associates in Europe, as it was considered an exceptional and unique American biological discovery.

  In early September 2012, I take a tour of Monticello, a national historic landmark and UNESCO World Heritage Site, hoping to find a pawpaw planting. I begin my search at the re-created kitchen garden, which is full of okra, its hibiscus flowers in full bloom, and beans, squash, and tomatoes, neatly arranged in rows on a high terrace behind Jefferson’s home. Next, I search his “Fruitery,” which includes a South Orchard of four hundred fruit trees, two vineyards, and “berry squares” of currants, gooseberries, and raspberries. I check Mulberry Row, the site of slave quarters just three hundred feet from Jefferson’s home, named for the fruit-bearing tree that provided both shade and berries, and I search among his peach and apple plantings, and along submural beds of fig trees. But nowhere in the fruitery is there a trace of pawpaws.

  I had read on the Monticello website that Jefferson’s fruit production reflected the two schools of fruit growing that occurred in eighteenth-century Virginia. The first was “Field” or “Farm” orchards that produced fruit for cider, brandy, or livestock feed. “There is some truth to one historian’s tongue-in-cheek remark that it was a significant event when Americans began eating their fruit rather than drinking it,” the website remarks.1 These trees were usually grown from seed, with unpredictable results. But Jefferson’s was also an Old World orchard, with other plantings of grafted European cultivars, from Spanish almonds to French apricots. European pomologists guided the care of these trees. “The Fruitery at Monticello, however, was unique because it was both an Old World Fruit Garden and a colonial Virginia ‘Farm Orchard,’” according to the website. “Like Jefferson himself, it represented the best of the European heritage combined with a distinctive New World vitality and personality.”2 I can think of no better candidate for such an orchard than the pawpaw: a hefty, custard-filled tree fruit with American roots.

  During a group tour of the home I ask our guide if he knows anything about Jefferson’s work with pawpaws, and whether there are any planted here. He checks with another expert and confers, but concludes rather definitively that, no, there weren’t any pawpaws here, and that Jefferson didn’t cultivate pawpaws in his day.

  At the conclusion of the tour, we exit the home and enter the formal gardens. Walking along the west lawn, I admire the small fishpond, and the hedges and trees planted generations ago. And then, just beyond the more formal plantings, I spot it: a pawpaw tree, one of the largest I have ever seen. Even from a distance I can positively identify the leaves. For a brief moment I think maybe I’ve been duped by the similar-looking cucumber magnolia, but the tree is bearing its unmistakable fruit. A few pieces lie in the grass, while others still cling to branches. The tree has grown in the classic pyramidal pawpaw shape, with one lower branch large enough to climb on—a feat I have rarely encountered anywhere. Although it hasn’t produced fruit in abundance, the tree is so large that there’s enough for me to gather quite a few. The pawpaws are on average four or five inches long, larger than most wild fruit. I eat one on the spot: Not excessively seedy, it’s sweet but does leave a bitter aftertaste. Nothing too exceptional, but it’s here at Monticello, and that seems significant enough.

  I can wish, but I don’t imagine that this tree, large as it is, was planted by Thomas Jefferson. Pawpaw patches, however, as a single organism, can be incredibly long-lived. Considering this, the large pawpaw tree in front of me could be a clonal offspring, a seedling even, sprouted from dropped fruit of a tree that Thomas Jefferson planted in the early 1800s.

  Either way, it’s a discovery, since no staff I spoke with earlier had any knowledge of its existence. I show it to a Monticello Gardens tour leader. “Far out,” he says. “You found that here?” More than twenty-seven million people have visited Monticello; on this day, hundreds if not thousands toured the site. Every walking tour of the home ends here, near this tree, and yet it remains unknown. Even here, pawpaw grows in anonymity.

  At the age of twenty-one, George Washington was the first English colonist to venture over the Appalachian Mountains on official order. His military career constantly sent him into the wilderness, where he confronted not only gunfire and cannon blast, but also difficult terrain and inclement weather. Still, it would be misleading to call the woods entirely hostile, as they were abundant with wild fruit, greens, and game. If Washington wasn’t already acquainted with pawpaws as a boy in Virginia, he certainly would have discovered the fruit on campaigns in the mountains of that state, as well as in Pennsylvania. Everywhere he went was—and remains—pawpaw country. Like Lewis and Clark, the many settlers to follow, and the native peoples before him, Washington and his armies would have found this rich fruit a welcome blessing when provisions were low. And in the bottoms of the Potomac River, which his plantation overlooked, among the sycamores and hickories, were also pawpaws.

  Today pawpaws are absent from the formal gardens, but they abound in the wild places surrounding Mount Vernon. They’re behind the plantation’s tobacco barn, where a small stream drains into the Potomac. Along with the pink blooms of swamp rose mallow (and lingering bits of litter) are a scattering of pawpaw trees. Another patch of wild pawpaws grows behind the replica of a small slave cabin. This section of Mount Vernon, called Dogue Run Farm, was home to the hundreds of slaves Washington owned in his lifetime. Pawpaws would have been gathered from these woods and eaten by the nation’s first president and his slaves alike.

  Near Washington’s tomb, just above one of the walking paths, a patch of several large pawpaw trees grows among dark, towering evergreens. Thousands of visitors walk this path every year, with ripe pawpaws growing close enough to fall on someone’s head. When I examine the patch I am rewarded with a single, large piece of fruit.

  One of the best and most often-repeated pawpaw myths says that chilled pawpaw was one of Washington’s favorite desserts. I have so far been unable to find any evidence to substantiate this claim, but perhaps this is fitting, that the nation’s first president, of whom there are so many legends—the chopping of the cherry tree; the wooden teeth that weren’t—ought also to have some connection with America’s largest, most impressive native fruit.

  But let’s say the story is true. Did he gather pawpaws while out on a fox hunt, or a walk around his estate? How would Washington’s pawpaw have been presented to him? Would his enslaved chef, Hercules, have kept pieces of whole fruit in the ice cellar? And was it wild, or fruit picked from his garden? Perhaps Washington enjoyed slicing the fruit, twisting it open, and eating it with a spoon. He might have sucked on pawpaw seeds for every bit of the sweet pulp. Perhaps Hercules scooped it for him, presented it as a pudding in a bowl, seated in ice. Yes, maybe Washington did eat pawpaw by the chilled bowlful each September.

  The Charlottesville Farmers Market is a Saturday-morning happening. A massive parking lot that on another day would be a waste of downtown real estate is filled with booths, vendors selling fruits and vegetables, prepared foods, tacos, and more.

  Daniel Perry, who owns and operates Jam According to Daniel, is experienced with all sorts of ripe fruit—from fig, peach, and strawberry, to apple, blueberry, and raspberry. His jams are displayed in mason jars at the market, all wrapped in black-and-white labels. One pound of local fruit in every jar, no pectin added.

  A friend of Perry’s, experimenting at home, made a pawpaw jam using Daniel’s technique. It was a vibrant yellow, “fabulous, passionfrui
t-y, pineapple-y, sort of vanilla-y . . . tropical ensemble,” he said. Intrigued, Perry then went to a local wild patch and gathered between twenty and thirty pounds of fruit. After several hours, he processed just a few pounds. So he called it a day, and planned to resume the task the following morning. That’s when he encountered the notorious scent of ripening pawpaws. “It smells like if a perfume factory were an animal, and that animal was roadkill,” Perry says. “It’s just this sweet, sickly sort of smell.”

  Pawpaws typically last three to five days at room temperature before, as Daniel observed, they’re unusable and far too overripe. His description may be sensational—and to some it’s a pleasant aroma—but as ripening turns to fermentation, the scent can certainly be overwhelming. Of the ones Daniel gathered in the wild, many were picked up from the ground—as the song instructs—and were likely bruised, and well on their way to being too far gone before he’d even brought them home. His olfactory senses were doomed from the beginning.

  This perishability, the pawpaw’s short shelf life, is also often cited as the reason why pawpaws haven’t been brought under commercial cultivation. There are ways to address this challenge, and many pawpaw growers are succeeding; nonetheless, it’s true—and if George Washington really did enjoy a chilled pawpaw, we know that the lesson had already been learned in the eighteenth century—do not wait to get your pawpaw on ice.

  The distance between historic Colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown is thirteen miles via the Colonial Parkway, a scenic roadway and part of the National Park Service. At least ten of those miles are lined with a dense and vibrant understory of pawpaws, with trees standing shoulder-to-shoulder the entire way. Of course I have to stop and go in to find fruit. As I load my hatchback with the first batch of picked-up pawpaws, gathered from the woods there, I am visibly shaking with excitement. It is the largest expanse of fruit-bearing pawpaws I’ve ever walked through. In the residential neighborhoods adjacent to the parkway, pawpaws grow like weeds, popping up in hedges and along unkempt property edges.