[HN Gopher] Consider the Pawpaw
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Consider the Pawpaw
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 68 points
Date : 2024-02-27 13:11 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (beltmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (beltmag.com)
| taway789aaa6 wrote:
| I am the proud gardener of seven paw paw trees. I've been tending
| them for a little more than three years now and am very VERY
| excited for when (if ever) they produce fruit! I wish there were
| more places to find other varieties (e.g. not Asimona Triloba)
| that might help with pollination.
| gleapsite2 wrote:
| My understanding (and you probably already know) is that
| PawPaws are pollinated by flies (and not bees).
|
| At a medieval/fantasy campground I've planted thousands of
| trees at, we located the pawpaw trees near the bathrooms and
| trash cans. Both of which attract flies.
|
| Perhaps when (or shortly before) the pawpaws are in bloom, you
| dump some charnel or other biowaste near the trees to help
| attract flies?
| zikduruqe wrote:
| We used to hang road kill up in our pawpaw trees to get the
| flies to come to them.
| adregan wrote:
| Some people drape bacon on the limbs to attract flies to
| pollinate the pawpaws!
|
| You can also try hand pollinating with a soft brush if you're
| not interested in adorning the boughs with rotting meat.
| jmbwell wrote:
| Or the prickly pear
|
| If you prick a raw paw, next time beware!
|
| Don't pick a prickly pear by the paw, when you pick a pear try to
| use the claw!
|
| But you don't need to use the paw when you pick a pear of the big
| pawpaw
|
| Have I given you a clue?
| jqgatsby wrote:
| Golly! Thanks, Baloo!
| kstrauser wrote:
| I heard that instantly when I saw "pawpaw".
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Do paw-paw give bears/non-human mammals any health problems
| (see Parkinson's discussion elsewhere)?
|
| (I see down thread that the paw-paw of Disney's Jungle Book
| would not be the paw-paw discussed here, I think? Baloo was a
| Sloth Bear, I think and I don't think they have those in N.
| America??)
| Asraelite wrote:
| The Jungle Book is set in India, so you would expect it to be
| a papaya but that doesn't really make sense either. This page
| talks about it: http://expatpawpaw.blogspot.com/2016/02/that-
| song-about-pawp...
|
| Honestly I'm kinda shocked that an article all about
| explaining what a pawpaw is didn't lead with the fact that
| the same word can refer to two completely different fruits.
| ubj wrote:
| Glad someone brought up this reference :) This is what I
| thought of too.
|
| (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5dhSdnDb3tk&t=1m14s)
| Footkerchief wrote:
| Missing mention of pawpaw's annonacin content, which causes
| Parkinsonism.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22130466/
|
| "Pawpaw fruit contains a high concentration of annonacin, which
| is toxic to cortical neurons."
|
| https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs...
|
| "Pawpaw fruit contains high concentrations of annonacin, which is
| toxic to nerve cells. In addition there have been case reports of
| possibly related nerve toxicity. Therefore, chronic use should be
| avoided."
| 6177c40f wrote:
| Probably not a huge issue as long as you only eat it every so
| often. But I wonder about the possibility of producing
| varieties of pawpaw (or soursop or other related Annonas) that
| don't produce annonacin. Probably could be done with genetic
| engineering, or much more slowly with selective breeding.
|
| Given that there are places where people consume Annonas very
| often, and that this may lead to alarmingly high rates of
| parkinsonism [1], this could be considered an effective public
| health intervention.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10440304/
| Footkerchief wrote:
| The evidence we have for safety of low-level consumption
| doesn't look great.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7691614/
|
| "The paucity of adequate studies, particularly related to
| long-term use of A. muricata supplements, currently does not
| allow the establishment of a safe intake level."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10092620/
|
| "Cognitive performance assessed with the MDRS worsens above a
| cumulative consumption threshold of 0.2 fruit-years of
| Annonaceae fruit/juice (ie, one fruit every 5 days for 1
| year) or with consumption of any quantity of Annonaceae
| herbal tea."
| throwawaygal7 wrote:
| This study is of a small island population.
| jonah wrote:
| The bark and leaves are the primary sources of
| benzyltetrahydroisoquinolines.
| margalabargala wrote:
| "one fruit every 5 days for 1 year" is far above what I
| would consider occasional consumption.
|
| Pawpaws are not in season for very long, and do not keep
| well. Unless you are canning or otherwise preserving them,
| a dozen per year is probably a high estimate for people who
| live in areas where they grow.
|
| Relatives such as the soursop are available year-round in
| tropical areas, but if you limit your intake to the pawpaw
| only, eating a handful when they are ripe each year
| probably won't hurt you.
|
| I lived in Maryland near a forest with a large number of
| wild pawpaw trees that produced an enormous amount of
| fruit, and was very into foraging as a hobby, and I don't
| think I ever ate more than six or seven in a single season.
| jonah wrote:
| I don't know about Parkinson's, but acetogenins[1] work by
| down regulating ATP production in mitochondria. This
| mechanism has been studied for potential applications from
| cancer treatment to pesticides.[2]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetogenin
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_L._McLaughlin &c.
| intuitionist wrote:
| Fortunately you've gotta work pretty hard for chronic use,
| since it's only available for a couple months out of the year.
| This is definitely a concern if they ever do develop a pawpaw
| industry, though.
| ActionHank wrote:
| This depends on where you live.
|
| I've lived in a country where it was available year round,
| grew like a weed in gardens, and was eaten on the regular by
| many people I know.
| jonah wrote:
| The fruit being discussed is endemic to a portion of the
| southeast United States.
|
| https://www.fs.usda.gov/nrs/atlas/tree/v3/367
|
| You may be thinking of a relative like the soursop which
| does have a broader range.
| zztop44 wrote:
| The person you're replying to probably assumed (as I did)
| that the article was about papaya, which is called pawpaw
| in some parts of the world. They will probably be
| relieved (as am I) to find out it's about an unrelated
| fruit.
| ActionHank wrote:
| You're on the money there, phew.
| bbatha wrote:
| In addition to what other commenters have noted about
| difficulty eating enough quantity, this is not a commercial
| fruit and thus no standards for what you'll get. There are a
| variety of on-going breeding programs for commercial pawpaws.
| This is just one more item on the checklist to successfully
| selectively breed out. If you see pawpaws in the supermarket
| its unlikely current studies will apply to it. Breeders
| understanding how to breed for and against the annonacin
| content is actually very high on their list of priorities, not
| for eating, but the high annonacin makes pawpaws an excellent
| deer and mosquito repellent, and is being studied as a source
| for chemo-therapy and other drugs.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18598079/ I suspect these will
| be the first commercial use cases for the pawpaw as they use
| the trees bark, leaves, and skins of the fruit and not the
| fragile flesh.
| FumblingBear wrote:
| I live in a region that apparently has Pawpaw trees that grow
| natively and until last year had never even heard of the fruit!
|
| This year I'm hoping to try one of these for the first time :)
|
| I figure it's a pretty unique experience and helps me appreciate
| some of the local agriculture that's hard to find elsewhere.
| ronniefalcon wrote:
| Very nice when they are good but in my experience, somewhat like
| an avocado, they tend to turn extremely quickly and once they are
| on the way out, they are _not good_
| jonah wrote:
| For others, they're often described as tasting like banana
| custard or mango. Rich and creamy flesh with favs bean sized
| black seeds.
| sjsanc wrote:
| In South Africa we refer to the papaya as pawpaw, I'm in England
| now, and here they just say papaya.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya. This article mentions
| papaya as a separate fruit. Is there something missing?
| lidavidm wrote:
| Well, yes: pawpaw is a different fruit in the US Midwest, and
| that's what the article is about.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Growing up in US midwest we learned the folk song with the
| line: "Way down yonder in the paw paw patch...".
| wil421 wrote:
| They grow in the South and all the way to the Atlantic.
| Including small parts of the North Florida panhandle.
| twright wrote:
| Carica papaya versus Asimina triloba
| zdragnar wrote:
| The article covers it rather well, if you get far enough in, I
| thought.
|
| This pawpaw is a fruit native to North America, and the name
| sharing is just coincidence. Here's the Wikipedia page for it:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Why don 't grocery stores stock pawpaw fruit?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38851025 - Jan 2024 (151
| comments)
|
| _Why Is the Most American Fruit So Hard to Buy?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33139936 - Oct 2022 (18
| comments)
| dvh wrote:
| When I've tried to search what does pawpaw tastes like the two
| most specific descriptions I could find was "mild pawpaw taste"
| and "not banana".
| searine wrote:
| A ripe pawpaw is like a banana/mango flavor. Bitter and tough
| before ripe, but very sweet and soft when fully ripe with
| almost no bitter or sour. Slightly stringy like a squash.
| jonah wrote:
| Banana custard but slightly more strongly flavored; creamy,
| white to yellow flesh.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > When I've tried to search what does pawpaw tastes like the
| two most specific descriptions I could find was "mild pawpaw
| taste" and "not banana".
|
| The taste is very variable in different cultivars of this
| fruit. Some wild are said to be awful, but in the edible ones
| there are basically two groups: "plain banana" and "complex
| tropical mix".
|
| "not banana" means that the flavor is a mix of tropical fruits.
| More acidic and with complex overtones that can be described as
| pineapple, mango, or bubblegum
| modeless wrote:
| My favorite niche YouTube channel has an episode on pawpaws:
| https://youtu.be/zUy2O3qDT8I?si=HvvH2SZsDy4Yc88e
|
| He describes it "like if you took soursop, mango, and banana
| and blended it into a smoothie". Maybe not helpful if you
| haven't had soursop.
| ars wrote:
| It tastes like a mix of an apple and a banana.
| tomoyoirl wrote:
| David Foster Wallace it ain't.
|
| https://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
| sdwr wrote:
| What a terrible imitation! Uses the format of that classic, but
| completely butchers it.
|
| DFW did a dark reflection of a travel piece. His anti-social,
| elitist, nihilistic tone was expertly woven in, and creates
| tension between the subject and author.
|
| This just... is travel journalism, but using that one's
| structure? A mirror of a mirror, all meaning lost.
| jonah wrote:
| If you're in a region where they grow - temperate but with
| sufficient overwinter chill - you could consider planting some.
| They're nice looking trees with large leaves, the fruit is tasty,
| zebra swallowtail butterfly caterpillars feed off of the leaves,
| and you're helping preserve an endemic American fruit tree.
|
| My Dad's little one-man nursery is a good source of trees. ;)
|
| https://www.blossomnursery.com/
|
| (Some of you may also appreciate the style of his website as
| reminiscent of the "old web".)
|
| [Edit: grammar.]
| wil421 wrote:
| I haven't been able to find them for a few years now. If I can
| I will order some.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| That website is probably older than I am. It's beautiful! I
| wish more people had personal websites that looked fun and
| customized like that!
| whyenot wrote:
| Oh wow, thank you sharing your dad's nursery. I am going to
| purchase some germinated seeds from him for the university
| greenhouse collection that I manage.
| marl0 wrote:
| As a cat dad I consider myself a pawpaw.
| tedmcory77 wrote:
| Anyone know of folks being able to grow any varieties in Manatee
| County Florida? I've spent a bit of time looking for varieties
| but everyone seems to indicate it's too hot.
| atebyagrue wrote:
| I've been harvesting these in the wild for years. They are pretty
| difficult to describe in flavor (banana/mango/tropical being a
| good approximation), as the flavor isn't consistent even between
| close patches. They have about a 3 week ripe window mid-to-end
| August (depending on the shade) in my area when they should be
| harvested. I typically just push on the slender tree & if any
| fall; they're ripe. It's best to harvest them, halve them, scoop
| them into a freezer bag, and use when desired. It's the only way
| I've found to be able to preserve them & the delicate flavor some
| of them tend to have.
| 6B wrote:
| I'm central Ohio and only heard of pawpaw fruit a couple times
| as a tiny child. Totally forgot they existed. Most of Dad's
| foraging was a different season (morels). How would one go
| about trying to find (relatively) local to try pawpaw when
| they're in season?
| emursebrian wrote:
| They're native here. I've been trying to get some trees going for
| a few years. So far, my trees have been slow to grow and I've
| lost most of what I planted.
|
| I've planted a half dozen clones from a few different trees back
| in 2021, and one or two of those has survived. Last year, I
| planted a few seedlings.
|
| They need shade when they're young. Some say they're good after
| two years and some say you need to let them get to be a certain
| size before you give them full sun.
|
| I changed from wire tomato cages and old sheets to tree wraps and
| stakes and the trees seem to have fared fine.
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