Foraging for Pawpaws

My family reunion took place in mid September at my Grandma and Grandpa's farm in Gardner, KS. I caught up with family that I hadn't seen in years, cheered on the Jayhhawks as they played K-State and scarfed down baked beans and potato salad while enjoying the crisp, autumn weather. After a few more games of volleyball with my cousins and a few more hugs from my family, Chris and I decided it was time for a bike ride.

Pawpaws grow in clusters on small, shade loving trees

Chris, my dad and I plus our four-legged friends Rudy, Trudy and Stella, headed down to the new Kill Creek biking/walking trail that runs near my dad's house. My dad was excited to show us a new mountain biking trail that he had discovered. We  had only taken a few sharp turns and crossed a small creek when our noses urged us to stop and look around. No, it wasn't a skunk, wild onions or even sweet flowers....this smell was completely new to all of us, and delicious. The smell was fruity and ripe, as though someone was holding a fresh mango right under our noses.

After a little bit of poking around we noticed small, potato like fruits with light green skin that had fallen from small trees growing in the shade of the forest. Chris immediately took a bite and in response had me yelling "No! It might be poisonous!!!" He wiped his mouth and grinned, "They're pretty good!"

We were all three enchanted with the idea that there could be an edible fruit growing so near our home that we had never heard of or seen before. My dad has lived in the area his entire life and as an avid jogger he frequently stumbles across wildlife and flowers, but never these sweet, green fruits. We were determined to get to the bottom of this wild food mystery.

I walked the now bruised fruit over to my grandparent's house wrapped in a leaf for better identification. None of my older family members who had grown up in the area knew what the plant was either. As I turned to leave (and consult all-knowing Google) my Grandma had some final words of wisdom.

"I remember a song my mom used to sing when I was little, it went something like this..'Picking up Paw-Paws put 'em in your pockets, Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.'  Maybe what you found are paw-paws." I thanked my grandma for the clue and headed back to my dad's to solve the mystery once and for all.

At this point, Chris still hadn't dropped dead from eating the fruit so we knew it wasn't poisonous and we had a lead search term, "pawpaws."

After a little research we verified that yes, our wild fruit discovery was in fact a pawpaw. We decided that over the course of the next week we would look into the health benefits of this native, wild fruit and collect a bag of them to make jelly.