Shenandoah Paw Paw

The paw paw is the largest edible fruit native to America. Well known in much of the eastern United States, the tree has long, tropical looking leaves and produces dark green, oblong fruit (3” to 6” long) with a pulp that tastes like vanilla custard. You can just take out your spoon and eat the delicious treat. While the paw paw tree grows well in much of the nation, it needs a long hot summer to ripen its fruit and only the earliest ripening cultivars stand a chance of maturing in the cooler parts of the Pacific Northwest. The pulp has big seeds that are easy to spoon out and discard or plant to grow additional trees.