pawpaw fruit

We planted 2 new trees this past weekend, pawpaw trees!  You don’t see them around much any more, but for years they were a diet staple over a lot of the US.  They produce edible fruit, and their seeds used to be made into a shampoo that killed lice.  In fact, the active ingredient in the seeds is what they make lice shampoo out of now.  The fruit are supposed to taste like banana custard.  It will be a few years before ours bear fruit.  They propagate like birch trees… the parent tree sends out shoots that become new trees attached to the parent.  So eventually we should have a little field of pawpaw trees!

If you want more info about the pawpaw tree, here is a good site with lots about the history of the tree.

Pawpaw flower

Inside the fruit.

Fruit in the tree.