Anna E. Timmerman and Blaise Pezold

The pawpaw (Asimina triloba), America’s largest native fruit, is experiencing a resurgence of interest from chefs, brewers and native plant enthusiasts. The LSU AgCenter has been encouraging the cultivation of pawpaws in Louisiana through an annual Pawpaw Symposium in partnership with the Meraux Foundation and through extension education outreach to specialty crop producers looking to diversify their offerings.

This tasty fruit was once an important food source for indigenous peoples in North America. The fruits are oval shaped with thin skin, and inside, its custardlike flesh tends to be orange, yellow or cream colored with several large, inedible black seeds. The fruits vary in size, with some as large as potatoes while others are finger sized. Pawpaws spread outside of their native historical range thanks to the help of people and wildlife, driven by the flavor that can be similar to a mango, banana or even vanilla. Pawpaws can be found along waterways and in forests, usually in rich, loess-type soils. They grow throughout Louisiana from Shreveport to Avery Island and find their way into orchards and backyards almost in a frenzy. Independent garden centers statewide have difficulty keeping them in stock due to high demand.

Pawpaws are difficult to ship because of their thin, easily damaged skin and have a short two-to-three-week harvest season, making them an elusive treat that never developed a widespread commercial system. Chefs, brewers and bakers looking to highlight local foods and interesting flavors seek them and pay high prices for the opportunity to give people a taste. You can find cleaned pawpaw pulp for sale online for $12 to $15 a pound. The renewed interest in home food production has also resulted in an increasing number of garden centers carrying these fruit trees, often at a premium price.  

Professional horticulturists, chefs, home growers and others interested in pawpaws have gathered each December in recent years at the annual Gulf South Pawpaw Symposium at the Meraux Foundation’s Docville Farm in Violet, Louisiana. More than 125 attendees from across the Gulf Coast region attended the 2024 symposium, and participants went home with at least two trees to plant. The trees are named for the indigenous tribes, such as Chitimacha, who historically lived in the places where the pawpaws are found. These locations are a rare repository of truly Southern wild genetics.

The majority of national pawpaw breeding and cultivation has taken place in northern states of Appalachia and the Great Lakes. In the 1990s, an LSU AgCenter horticulturist did some trial work on pawpaws, and some trees remain at the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden. The pawpaw was largely forgotten as a Louisiana specialty crop until recently. The Meraux Foundation and the AgCenter are working to spread pawpaws to fruit growers statewide, intending to identify strong, productive locally bred cultivars adapted to Southern growing challenges.

Especially productive or tasty cultivars are typically grafted using scion wood and hardy, local wild rootstock. Pawpaws require at least two trees to cross-pollinate. Single trees may produce suckers, but these are genetic clones of the parent and will typically not bear successfully. Seeds must be cold stratified for three to four months before planting after collecting them from the fruits and not allowed to dry out. If they do dry out, germination will be severely reduced. When purchasing seeds, they should be shipped in moist potting media or peat moss to keep them viable.  

There are several reputable online vendors offering seeds, scion wood and starter trees of both named cultivars and promising wild selections. Kentucky State University maintains a list of nurseries that carry pawpaws. Many independent garden centers are also beginning to carry pawpaw trees featuring Southern-adapted cultivars and genetics. These trees are derived from productive Louisiana wildstock and are adapted to our climate. They can be used to produce fruits or used as grafting rootstock for named cultivars. Plant pawpaws during the dormant season as this will give the roots a good chance of establishing well before summer.

Pawpaws are naturally understory trees and benefit from shade protection, especially when young and newly planted. Use a 30% to 40% shade cloth covering, which helps to protect the young trees from sun exposure and can be gradually removed to acclimate them after two years of growth. Pawpaws begin to fruit around four to six years after planting but may take up to 10 years. Pawpaws are the host plant for the zebra swallowtail butterfly, which will lay eggs on the leaves and cause a little feeding damage. These caterpillars are not considered to be pests, and pawpaws have little to no disease or pest issues known.  

Pawpaws are experiencing a resurgence of interest in Louisiana and may be a good addition to the home orchard. Though a little difficult to source, once established pawpaws provide a sweet reward that can’t be bought at the grocery store. The fruits can be eaten when ripe or turned into ice cream, baked goods and even beer.

To learn more about growing pawpaws or to get added to the Gulf South Pawpaw Symposium contact list, please email Anna Timmerman at atimmerman@agcenter.lsu.edu or Blaise Pezold at blaise@merauxfoundation.org.

Anna Timmerman is an AgCenter Extension agent for St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes and is the state point of contact for citrus fruits. Blaise Pezold is the coastal and environmental program director at the Meraux Foundation.

This article appears in the spring 2025 edition of Louisiana Agriculture.

Blaise Pezold, pictured above, is the coastal and environmental program director for the Meraux Foundation, a charitable organization based in St. Bernard Parish. Pezold developed an interest in pawpaws while working as a chef. An avid forager, he would harvest wild-grown fruits and trade or share them in the New Orleans area.

“It's the largest fruit native to North America, so we should be growing it,” Pezold said. “We probably should have been growing it down here for hundreds of years.”

Over time, he has developed a knack for finding wild pawpaw patches and germinating and growing large 2-year-old trees from the seeds. He now produces several hundred pawpaw trees annually and gives them away to attendees of the annual Gulf South Pawpaw Symposium.

“I saw a whole lot of interest and people wanting information, and I was already growing them out here,” he said about founding the symposium with AgCenter Extension agent Anna Timmerman. “It feels easy to talk about if you know people want to learn.”

Pawpaws have a relatively short harvest window and are difficult to ship or store compared to other fruits, but the wonderful, elusive flavor drives demand. Photo by Blaise Pezold

Blaise Pezold produces several hundred trees each year at Docville Farm in Violet, Louisiana, within the Fruit Under Screened Environments (FUSE) facility. Photo by Blaise Pezold

Each December, the Gulf States Pawpaw Symposium draws enthusiasts and growers from several states. Each person receives two free pawpaw trees to take home and plant. Photo by Alecia Marrero