I first tried a pawpaw in the hills of West Virginia. The fruit is unexpectedly tropical in texture and flavor, but is native to most of the eastern United States, including those northern reaches of the Ohio River Valley. In Louisiana, the trees have deeper ties to the area’s Native American roots; just 75 miles south of where I grew up, there’s even a town named for indigenous people whose name derives from a word that is said to translate to “Pawpaw people.” This weekend, I foraged for fruit with Blaise Pezold of Meraux Foundation’s Docville Farm. Blaise is harvesting the seeds from what we collected, to start a crop of trees in Docville’s greenhouse.
