Native Pawpaw Trees Teach Several Lessons at Denham Springs Junior High

Kyle Peveto

In Justin Rayburn’s horticulture course at Denham Springs Junior High, pawpaws make appearances throughout the curriculum.

Students learn about several fruits and vegetables through the class, which features a great deal of hands-on work in the garden in addition to classroom lessons.

But the pawpaw, a native fruit tree that grows easily in Louisiana but is not well known, teaches them the most, Rayburn said.

“The potential for teaching or making concepts real is very easy with pawpaws,” Rayburn said. “They’re so different, and kids are drawn in by just the potential for tasting one and the knowledge of them.”

Growing pawpaws gives Rayburn a reason to teach students about plants that have tap roots and about a tree’s cambium layers, which he shows them when they learn to graft the trees by splicing a section of a desired tree onto the root system of another tree. He also uses the pawpaw to teach how flies help with pollination and that the zebra swallowtail butterfly relies on the tree to live and reproduce.

“You’re constantly reinforcing horticulture concepts through one tree,” Rayburn said. “For us, it has become like an anchor plant.”

In 2021, Rayburn started teaching when he took a temporary horticulture and aquaculture job after spending a few years working overseas for a service-oriented nonprofit. When the position became permanent, he began looking for interesting ways to teach horticulture, and his research led him to pawpaws.

At the 2022 Gulf South Pawpaw Symposium organized by the Meraux Foundation in Violet, Louisiana, Rayburn learned more about these fruit trees from AgCenter Extension agents who spoke and from Blaise Pezold, the foundation’s coastal and environmental program manager who spearheaded the event. Rayburn left with four trees, and then he found help from Charles Overstreet, LSU AgCenter professor emeritus, a plant pathologist who became fascinated with pawpaws decades ago.

“I love fooling with pawpaws and grafting, so I became serious about grafting new varieties, and, next thing you know, I’ve got a yard full of pawpaws,” said Overstreet, who now grows more than 30 varieties in his orchard.

Overstreet has visited Rayburn’s class regularly over the past three years to teach the students about pawpaws in the classroom and then guide them through a grafting lesson. He enjoys spreading the word about this fascinating native American tree that so few people recognize.

“How would you have heard of it? It’s not in the grocery store. They grow in the woods, and they get ripe in July and August. Here in Louisiana, that’s when you get eaten up by mosquitoes and everything else,” Overstreet said.

Children are highly motivated to learn about these obscure fruits and to learn the new skill of grafting, Rayburn said.

“With pawpaws, they become the experts, and for a kid, that’s huge. They can say, ‘I know this, and I’m sharing the information with an adult.’ That’s a big deal,” Rayburn said.

Those students share that information with their parents, and Rayburn envisions a few of those parents seeking out a pawpaw tree for their yards.

“We have the potential to open everyone’s eyes,” Rayburn said, “and it’s catching on.”

Kyle Peveto is the editor of Louisiana Agriculture.

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

A man holds a potted plant while talking to two teenage boys.

Charles Overstreet, LSU AgCenter professor emeritus, teaches Denham Springs Junior High students to graft pawpaw trees. Photo by Kyle Peveto

An older man and a younger man talk while the younger man holds a potted tree.

Charles Overstreet, left, talks with Justin Rayburn, Denham Springs Junior High teacher, about pawpaw trees. Photo by Kyle Peveto

6/3/2025 4:29:55 PM
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