Tim, you'll need to wait another 100 days at least to pick wild or cultivated fruit. Frozen pulp or ice cream from last year is probably your only possibility at the moment. When in season, they are sometimes offered at the DC farmers markets, but they do go fast.

I used to live in central MD, and used to fish the Potomac river alot. There are a good few PawPaw trees growing wild along the Potomac. We used to call them Breakfast fruits,- we used to step on the fallen fruit, and it looked like eggs, with sausages-(the seeds are dark brown like sausages) little did we know they were edible or even were Pawpaws! They are ripe in late summer if memory serves me right.

Deepcreek,

Do you know where along the Potomac I would look for the Paw Paws?

Tim

Tim, Where are you? I can point you to a couple of places near me. I'm on the Potomac near Harper's Ferry. In fact, I have a couple of paw paw's myself but they haven't had fruit yet. I go down to the river to get mine.

From the middle of September thru the beginning of October I have always been able to find ripe pawpaws along or near the C&O Canal tow path. Once you learn what the trees look like, they are easy to find. Although less than half of the trees have fruit, there are many trees to be found in that area.

I should have mentioned, I live on the C&O Canal. As Alfred says, they are easy to find, there are hundreds of them along the C&O. I live in Washington County.

Violetts lock- which is below Seneca on the Maryland side, Ive seen them between the river and C&O Canal. Some of the fruit drops on to the path along the C&O. Do beware of poision Ivy, in the woods in that area too, I used to get it sometimes there!

Thanks for the help. Where exactly is the C&O Canal? Can someone give me an address so i can look it up on mapquest?
I live in Montgomery County (Gaithersburg).

Tim

It's a national park that runs the length of Potomac River (Maryland side) from DC thru Cumberland. The site below has links to the canal's history, facilities, etc...

Here is a link that might be useful: C&O Canal Web Site

The C&O canal runs along side the Potomac river- you cant miss it! It runs pretty far, and defintely down in Montgomery CO. Violetts lock is off of River road as is many of the other locks (swains, etc). Great place to hike, or even bike if your into that- also good fishing in the river, and the canal.

Peterson indicates that he sells his selected pawpaws at the Dupont Circle farmers market in Washington, DC. And I think his orchard is near Harpers Ferry, but easily could be misremembering there. Ask him: he'll know where every pawpaw is in that region.
http://www.petersonpawpaws.com/Shenandoah.php

Tim,

I found and picked many ripe pawpaws yesterday near and along the C&O Canal in the Great Falls area. So if you want to try some, now is the time to go picking. They are ripe when they are soft.

In southern pa, They'll need another week or 2.
I can't wait to pick some.

Bass

All my years of looking (and visiting all the parks and nature researves in the area) and I still have not located any around here...(though I swear I did see one on I 80 heading east a couple years back....my wife wouldn't let me pull over to check)

I guess I'm ordering from Integration acres again this year.

~Chills

chills:

Look where it is damp, near streams and on bottomland (but not true swamp). There are thousands of plants within a few miles of here and probably hundreds of thousands within 25 miles, but people who have lived here for generations just don't know about the plant or fruit when you mention them.

Find someone in the state's native plant society; they will know where. Or a park naturalist.

chills,
gonebanas is right on target. I never knew what a pawpaw looked like until 10 years or so ago, when I first became interested in them - and then I realized I'd been seeing them all my life - and that they're EVERYWHERE around here.
Most prevalent along creeks, in the 'hollers', but they're a common understory plant throughout the woods here, even on hillsides.

Many thanks to my inquiry. I have gotten to taste the wild paw paws. Though sweet, it has a bitter after taste near the peel. I may have eaten too much b/c it left me with a bloated stomach and had to go #2 3x for the next couple of days.

Tim

With 6 trees in my yard, I can assure you I know what the trees look like, I just can't find any locally.

I guess integrationacres isn't shipping this year (they did have shipping problems last year).

~Chills

Let me amend that previous posting. Chris from IntegrationAcres emailed me yesterday and I should be recieving a shipment within the next week!!

~Chills

are there any near lock 5 sycamore island chain bridge or fletcher's boat house?

Pawpawman,
Most of the park along the towpath has the perfect environment for pawpaws. They love moist, well-drained soils that are high in organic matter. All the creeks feeding into the canal and the Potomac River, and the water from the canal, help to keep those soils moist. And with the canal's elevation above the river, the drainage is very good. As I said above, you may find that most of the trees do not have fruit; but there are so trees many in the park that it is still very easy to collect more than you can carry out of the park in an afternoon in the middle of September.

is there a place where one could buy it frozen? fresh is not in season now.

Wow, such enthusiam for paw paws- this is the most active post on this forum in weeks. I do find it a fascinating species, but with mediocre fruit. I am speaking from limited experience, having only 2 cultivars, Overlease and Sunflower and the seedlings I cut down last year because of the superiorty of the titled specimens.

Their virtue here is absolute pest resistance, even the coons can't make heads or tails of them- insects and fungus don't tangle with paw paws either. They are also very attractive and unique as ornamentals.

First sampling Sunflower I was surprised at how tastey it was, almost like a cross between a mango and a papaya (not as good as either) but after the novelty wore off they became reduced to a forage fruit-something I eat a few off the tree. When I bring them into the house no one eats them and they are thrown away.

Yes, harvesting a tropical fruit in a temperate climate is exciting but paw paws take too long to establish, rot too quickly and are too limited in cullinary use to become a major right now. While taste is extremely subjective I doubt many will reach for a paw paw over a mango which is a much easier to handle fruit after harvest. I hope you paw paw lovers will do some experimenting with seedlings to try to come up with improved cultivars. I believe this species may have a bright future though they're no star in my orchard in the present.

If anyone has paw paw seeds i really would like to start a tree. I have some various seeds to trade.

If you can't find anyone with some e-mail me in 6 months. I'll be sure to save some this time around. Be aware that they need to be held at a cold temperature for a few months before they will sprout. I've never done it myself, but the process is similar to how you would grow a chestnut.

in the past five years i have been buying pawpaw plant from -- burguess seeds-- and have never given a leaf, i bought it again this year and i am waiting, maybe this time it will survive. they send them dormant, but the stay dorman, has never given me a sign of life.

Paw Paw Questions (3):

SUNFLOWER CULTIVAR SELF-FERTILE?

*The ÂSunflower Paw-Paw cultivar is often commercially listed online as self-fertile; however, some websites which seem somewhat Âscholarly seem to indicate that this cultivar has never been actually proven to be self-fertile. IÂve even seen is said that they are "partially" self-fertile  whatever that means (maybe it means unreliably, but occasionally; or maybe it means only a few of the flowers will be able to be self-compatibly fertile. Has anyone grown a single specimen and yet received fruit and/or knows the answer to this question?

NATURAL POLINATION OF PAW-PAWS

*I was considering, if the ÂSunflower cultivar is not really self-fertile, planting 2 separate Paw-Paw cultivars. Since they are mostly only pollinated by flies and Âscavenging beatlesÂ, how far is the most I should keep them apart?

FORCED POLINATION OF PAW-PAWS

Can I detach the flowers of one Paw-Paw and then bring it over to the (attached) flowers of another Paw-Paw and fertilize the flower which is not detached in this way?

Thanks,
Steve

Steve- I just hand-pollinate with a soft natural paint artist's paintbrush. No need to detach the flower. The only problem is that the stamens and pistil may not be ready simultaneously in the same flower so you have to look at the stamens and make sure they are producing pollen then try to find a flower that looks like the pistil is in the right stage. One of the two seedling trees I pollinated last year kept its fruit on to ripen and the other had little green fruits but they fell off. I hope both ripen fruit this year.

I live in the Nashville area. Does anyone know where to find pawpaws here? If not,does anyone have any seeds to trade? Thanks

bee 1,
I'm about an hour NW of you. You should be able to find 'em locally if you've got access to woodlands - first place to look is in riparian areas alongside good-sized creeks, as that's where they'll be most commonly found, but you might find some bearing fruit in the bottom of hollows that drain to good-sized creeks as well.
In the meantime, be sure to visit the KY St. U Pawpaw website and learn more about them. I'd never knowingly seen one until 12 years or so ago, but once I saw one in fruit here, I realized I'd been around them all my life, and just didn't recognize the tree for what it was.

I am eating pawpaws already, a month early from normal. I have no idea why they ripened early this year in the yard even though those in the bottomlands twenty miles from here are on the normal schedule and nowhere near ripe yet.

The better pawpaw selections are a frustratingly strange and difficult set of plants to understand and grow well here, despite millions of healthy wild ones nearby, and I fear a disease is behind some of it. This is a topic of several aspects that I will elaborate on when I have some time.

Great thread. I too am new to pawpaws, now see them where I blithely walked before unknowingly. I posted a few pictures to help find them in the wild.

There are also some pictures on how to eat. Above it was noted that some of the wild ones have a bitterness near the skin. One good way to avoid that is to peel the fruit with a knife, then rinse it. Your odds of liking them the first time, and of developing quite an appreciation of them, go way up if you prepare them properly.

Pawpaws seem a little slow this year - I assume they are soaking in the luxurious rainfall and taking their sweet time to get ripe.

This weekend is the pawpaw festival in Kentucky (linked above) and there is also one in Waynesville, MO in the last weekend of Sept, called Paw Paw Daze. http://www.waynesvillemo.org/community.html might get you there.

Good luck in the pawpaw patch.

Ray

Here is a link that might be useful: Picking wild pawpaws

Hello Everyone,

I live in New England. A while a ago someone wrote and article about Pawaws for my local newspaper. I have been dieing to try one ever since. Does anyone know of a place that I could either find or buy a pawpaw fruit in Western Ma.? I would like to try the fruit to see if I like it or not before I plant a tree.

This is an early (hot) year throughout much of their native range. Just picked my first pawpaw of the season in my yard in Bethesda. So some should already be ripe along the warmer stretches of the C & O Canal (and Potomac River) cited above.

I live in the greater Philadelphia Area in Bucks County. And like most, have been dying to try a pawpaw. I have read through the posts above, and understand the Potomac is a good place to find them. But thats a bit further then I really wanna travel. Any tips as to where I can find some in Southern PA or my area? Thanks

James

James,

I know of two vendors selling named variety paw paw fruit from an orchard in Maryland. Expensive, but worth it IMO. Check out earthy dot com and heritage foods on the web. Email me if you have trouble finding the exact pages, I don't want to post links here.

Alex