Pawpaw: The Plant, The Person, Home

What does my grandfather have in common with North America’s only tropical tree?

Roots deep in the Appalachian earth.

I learned about pawpaw trees when I moved to West Virginia in 2016. One dry, fall day the Potomac was so shallow I could shuffle over rocks and through knee-deep water from the Mountain State to the Free State and back again. That’s when I tasted pawpaw fruit for the first time. The flavor was sweet and creamy. Tropical, yet somehow Appalachian, like the first Floridian born in a long line of mountaineer ancestors.

A botanist might use any of the following terms to describe Asimina triloba and its various plant parts: understory, deciduous, clonal, imbricated, conduplicate, acuminate, fetid, with leaves alternately arranged and cuneate, with pinnate venation. To me, the not-so-tall trees are delightfully humble with big droopy leaves and strangely captivating, oddball blooms.

In Indonesia, I loved a tree species with similarly-shaped leaves. I observed ten of these pohon Bingkuru, month after month, watching through binoculars as round, bumpy berries- monkey food- appeared and ripened from green to yellow. Looking up into the canopy I enjoyed refreshingly magical views of persistent sunbeams glowing through leaves, in various shades of bright green, like stained glass in a forest church.

My fond familiarity with the name ‘pawpaw’ is what immediately endeared me to the tree. To me, PawPaw was James Cox Alley, born in a small coal town in southern West Virginia in 1924. He loved reading, wearing hats, playing golf, watching sports, and cooking epic breakfasts- pass the apple butter, please!

Scouring pictures from my grandfather’s final visit to his birthplace, I searched for evidence of the characteristic pawpaw leaves along Laurel Creek but found none. I can only hope he tasted the fruit of his incidental namesake before he passed away in 2011. I miss PawPaw.

I also missed pawpaw fruiting season last year while I honeymooned in the Himalayas among dark and shiny rhododendron leaves, pinnately veined and delightful in their own right. Thanks to friends, I came home to a few fruits in the fridge. The juicy flesh went down my gullet and the seeds went into the fridge for the winter. Now, there are two seedlings I call ‘pawpaw puppies’ growing in the shade on my balcony. Steam rises from my WV-made mug as I sip chai- spicy, but also sweet, creamy, and a little bit Appalachian.

Pawpaw isn’t just a plant or a person. No matter where I am or what leaves surround me, as every cosmic possum or zebra swallowtail caterpillar knows…the pawpaw patch is home.

This piece was originally published on the WordPress blog, Almost Anthropology: Exploring Human Relationships with Animals and the Natural World.