paw paw patch song against paw paw background
Wild foraging

Way down yonder in the paw paw patch

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Call it the American Custard Apple or the West Virginia Banana, but it’s neither apple nor banana. It’s the Paw-paw (Asimina trilob), the largest native fruit of North America, and it grows throughout Appalachia. There are about seven other members of the genus Asimina, all growing in the southeastern U.S. Mature pawpaw trees produce fruits 2″ wide by 10″ long, which turn from green, to yellow, and then black as they ripen in the fall.

Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Come on, boys [or girls, or kids], let’s go find her,
Come on, boys, let’s go find her,
Come on, boys, let’s go find her,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Pickin’ up paw-paws, puttin’ ’em in her pockets,
Pickin’ up paw-paws, puttin’ ’em in her pockets,
Pickin’ up paw-paws, puttin’ ’em in her pockets,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

—The Paw Paw Patch
Traditional folk song

Paw-paw fruits are rich in minerals such as magnesium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, potassium, and phosphorus. The fruit also contains abundant concentrations of Vitamin C, proteins, and their derivative amino acids. The Peterson Field Guide mentions that the seeds, along with being an emetic, have narcotic properties.

The paw-paw pulp may be eaten raw, made into ice cream, baked, or used as a pie filling. Some Appalachian cooks make a custard out of “Poppaws.” Seed them, mash them, add milk, a little sugar, an egg and some allspice. Pour the batter into custard cups and set those in a bread pan with some water in the bottom of the pan. Bake at a medium heat. Stick a broom straw or toothpick in, and when it comes up clean it’s done. Paw-paw also makes an excellent dry, white wine. It can be made from fresh or canned fruit.

Paw-paw (Asimina trilob), the largest native fruit of North America

The paw-paw is sensitive to ultraviolet light, thus, paw paw seedlings may not grow back after forests have been clear cut, and there are very few virgin forests left in the United States. Paw-paws can be found growing there abundantly, but once the forests are harvested, the paw paw will not usually re-establish.

sources: www.fred.net/kathy/pawpaws.html
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/

More articles on wild foraging in the region:

Wait until the first frost has kissed the persimmons(Opens in a new browser tab)

Ramps:The King of Stink(Opens in a new browser tab)

Hickory chickens are underfoot this month(Opens in a new browser tab)

30 comments

  1. CAN AHYONE TELL ME WHERE I CAN FIND PAW PAW TREES THAT WILL GORW AND PRODUCE IN SOUTHEASE ALABAMA, AND OR SEED?

  2. Contact Kentucky State University if you are interested in growing some PawPaws, they are trying to foster an industry. I am convinced there is a market.

  4. Consider that Elbinsville, PA, in the southwest corner of the state, is only 34 miles from Paw Paw, WV, named for the famous tree that grows there. I’d say there’s a pretty strong chance they’ll grow in Southwestern Pennsylvania, yes.

  6. Growing up in southern West Va. makes me have very fond memories of going to pick paw paws with my Dad and Mom.I can see the old farm house sitting up on a slight hill with a rock wall that ran along the property line. My recollection is the pappaw trees were along the rock wall. The pappaws always turned black after a day or so and were rich tasting. I remenber them to have a black seed that was flat and hard. Never had any since my youth but remember going down to the pappaw patch more than once.Since Mom and Dad are gone I doubt I could even find the location but the memories remain clear.

  7. My grandparents are all from Kentucky. My greats had moved to Oklahoma. Down in the SW corner. I now live in Colorado (n. central). Ain’t no pawpaws here! My grands and parents sang it to me and I sang it to mine. Along with… “Up up in the sky, where the little birds fly. Down, down in the nest, where the little birds rest…..”

  8. We used to play a game with music called The Paw Paw Patch when I was in preschool in Oklahoma. It was okay I suppose, but I found it to be a rather dull and pointless activity personally! I’m 59, love games and music but well, I suppose this is a good activity for preschool age children. I preferred all the other things we did but Paw Paw Patch is fun to explain to anyone that has never heard of it. I always assumed it was some sort of berry or fruit patch actually! =)

  9. Paw paws grow in Paw Paw, Michigan, so I’d guess Pennsylvania will work as well!

    Great website! 🙂

  10. I live on a land trust in Real County, Texas, the hill country, and we try to raise a lot of our own food. I always heard of pawpaws and would love to grow them if we could get the kind of tree that would survive frost and hard freezes — I think anything that survives in Appalachia should survive here. I have a greenhouse with very high ceiling and have papaya seeds that probably came from Mexico. What do we do next? Appreciate any help!

  11. I HAVE AN ORCHARD OF PAW PAWS,I’M AT 3800 FT, ELEVATION. THEY PRODUCE FRUIT EVERY FALL. THE NEED PART SHADE AND SUN AND WATER NEAR POND,LAKE,OR RIVER WITH GOOD SOIL. I HAVE SEED AND 2YR. OLD TREES

  12. Wild Paw paws usually taste like a cross between a banana and a very ripe mango. Though some might have a vanilla or strawberry taste mixed in there as well. The texture is sort of like a custard. The seeds are very large and easy enough to eat around.

    You will never see them in a store, though sometimes, rarely, you might find a very few at a fruit market in the early fall. The skin is too thin, the meat too soft and the ripe period too short (2-5 days) for normal fruit transport. They only grow in shady areas because the seedlings are VERY light sensitive, especially to any long sunlight from the west/southwest. This is why they grown under the shade of larger deciduous (leafy tree) vegetation. They are easy to ID because they’re leaves are so large and distinct.

    Though once extremely well known and popular throughout the eastern US, if you are under 40 yrs old, then they would be unknown to you…even the children’s songs about Paws Paws are no longer taught in school because children are no longer outdoor oriented. As a child we usually knew where ever single paw paw patch was within about 5 miles or so.

    Paws Paws grow wild out in the shady woods back in Kentucky and Ohio and, except for the kids that would stumble upon them to eat as they walked along, they mostly just rotted on the ground and flies and ants would eat them…unseen and unknown. Unfortunately, kids don’t walk in the woods or explore streams anymore (heck, they don’t even use the parks or playgrounds) so even that seems to have disappeared…along with the Paw Paw.

    Scouts not only learned about paws paws, but almost every child knew the Paw Paw Patch song either from Cub Scouts or taught in school… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnpLS5PNZpw

  13. My grandpa Bossier used to sing this song to me when I was little. He was a 7th generation Louisianaian.in Natchitoches there was a tribe of natiave Americans called The PawPaw tribe, so I thought it had something to do with that!

  14. I planted a paw-paw four years ago, probably too close to a clearing. It now has produced another nearby. In the meantime under the deciduous trees a group of four has appeared over the last two years. So far no fruit but they are young. It takes at least two stands of paw-paw to allow for fruit to form. They send our shoots underground much like mayapple. Open deciduous forests are best…no honeysuckle!

  15. Weirdly, despite having no clue what a paw paw was, I have known that song so long that I don’t even know where I learned it: childhood friend? teacher? No idea. Last year I saw them in a catalog and bought a few young trees. The website says they will survive here and it won’t be clear cut so here’s hoping I can establish some. I’ve never tasted one but one day…

  16. There was a paw paw tree in Fetterman, (Grafton, WV) and 45 years ago I tasted paw paws.

  17. My daddy used to sing this to my sister whose nickname was Nellie when I was little. He was born in South Dakota, and moved to Wichita Falls when his father served in the Navy during WWII.

    I was always curious what it was and was excited to see it at the Purdue University apple market (experimental agricultural products) years later. It quickly turned black but my family got a taste.

    I heard it was called the ‘Hoosier Banana’ so knew it would grow here in central Indiana, and tried a few years in a row with different propagation forms, first from the seeds of those we’d eaten, then bare roots from a catalog, and finally had success after we ordered seven different species of saplings transplant-ready in a pail from a nursery in TN. We planted them as soon as they arrived near a sunny spot next to the street, close to a ravine. (We found out years later they were planted too close together as the largest plant at the beginning that we planted in the middle became the smallest.) We had to protect the spindly trunks from rabbits with chicken-wire fencing next spring.

    It took a few years for a crop. At first, my husband hand-pollinated the purple-brown flowers, but a couple seasons later the summer weather arrived too quickly and we didn’t have enough time. Despite that, it was our best crop. Unfortunately, that summer, my husband had to spend a lot of time later on a ladder removing Japanese beetles that loved eating the leaves.

    Now, we’ve noticed that we have pawpaws popping up all over the yard. We learned that the seeds have to remain moist to germinate (we’d dried the early ones out that first year), and we were too impatient the first go-around with some that didn’t die the first winter because pawpaws require time to establish a very deep taproot. We figured that the reason the pawpaws have sprouted all around the yard is squirrels buried seeds from the fruit that had dropped on the ground and was left there.

    The pale yellow pulp is very quick to oxidize, so I have found that we can enjoy them longer if we scrape the insides into baggies for freezing to thaw and enjoy on ice cream, puddings, Knox Blox gelatin, and baked goods.

  18. I grow paw paw in my yard. I have 3 plants and got 65+ paw paw off them this year 2018. They are so tasty.

  20. I remember growing up as a kid, several of us girls would sing the song this way, Peter, James, and John picking up pawpaws and so on. I hadn’t thought about this song in a very long while. To the students who attended Mountain View School (Highlanders), do you remember this? Irene Farley Robbinsville, N.C.

  21. I grew up in North Miami. We were taught this song. I always wondered what a pawpaw was. At the time we thought it was a sticker plant. Stickers grew in patches down here. The have a long stem with 8-10 stickers at the top. As kids we would pick them for “sticker fights”. The players who lost had the most stickers attached to their shirts. We called them “pawpaws”. Glad to finally know what a pawpaw really is. With that mystery solved does anyone know what a “Scuppernong is”?. In the past I would see pickups parked along the roadside willed with watermelons piled up in the bed and usually a sign advertising “Watermelons an Scupernongs”.

  22. Oh I know what a Scuppernong is, they are a green muscadine. Kind of like a grape but you don’t eat the skin. You pop the inside of the berry into your mouth. They are very sweet and make the best jelly. I finally found one last year and this year I have a lot of fruit!!! This is probably one of my favorite snacks of all time!

  23. Pingback: How to Grow and Care for Pawpaw Trees | Gardener’s Path - ReportWire

  24. Growing up in West Texas….60yrs ago….we used to sing this song in gradeschool, but none of us knew what a paw paw was….not even the teacher. After that, we would sing the more relevant: “Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. Jump down turn around, pick a bale a day. ” This song was actually ‘acted out’ as well — we jumped down.

  25. I have a mature grove of paw paws that I raised from seeds in northern VA (Rappahannock county). They produce a bushel or more a year (September harvest). Native paw paws are not the same as papayas found in Mexico and elsewhere. The first year after germinating, the seedlings must be in partial shade, after which they can be transplanted to a full sun location. Blossoms appear after 3-5 years. Seeds can be germinated after winterizing in a refrigerator door (do not freeze). Put in ziplock bag with a damp paper towel. Seeds will die if allowed to dry out. After 90 days remove from bag and plant in 14 inch “treepots” available on Amazon. Use black potting soil and plant 3/4 inch down. A cup of water each week for each pot. Seedlings poke up 8 weeks after planting. Keep in partial shade until fall of first year, then transplant to final location. Very long taproot. Two trees are needed to make fruit. Hand pollination is easy (search YouTube).

  26. Pingback: Interview With A Native Pawpaw Patch - Spirit Tree Farms
  27. Pingback: Picking up Paw Paws – Blog

  28. i have a pawl pawl patch in indianapolis on state property on the outside of the interstate wall

  29. Pingback: The Home Prairie in May | Tuesdays in the Tallgrass

  30. I wish y’all lived near me, I beg people every year to get some paw-paws. I have so many new trees each year it’s crazy. I wish someone would come take some of the baby’s. I have around 20 fruit producing trees at this time. I’m in Virginia on the Jackson River.

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