Asimina triloba, commonly known as the pawpaw tree, is the only North American member of the tropical plant family Annonaceae and produces the large edible fruit native to the continent.
Transcript:
RUDY MANCKE:
Hi, this is Rudy Mancke from University of South Carolina for NatureNotes.
Scott Finney was at Harbison State Forest and took some photographs of pawpaw trees with fruit on them, loaded with fruit.
I don't know whether you've ever eaten pawpaw, but it's almost like a banana-like taste. My mom's mom and her generation used to sing a little song about "picking up pawpaws, putting them in a basket way down yonder in the pawpaw patch." And it looks like Scott saw a real nice batch of pawpaws.
Usually they're an understory tree. Normally the fruit by this time of year is gone because every animal in the woods loves the taste of it. We've got a couple of species in South Carolina — one that's really much bigger than the other, but both of them have edible and very tasty fruit.
