Asimina triloba

Written by Carmin Nezat

Photo from LSU Ag Center

Paw Paw, Assiminier, Asimina triloba. The name pawpaw or papaw, first recorded in print in English in 1598, originally meant the giant herb Carica papaya or its fruit (as it still commonly does in many English-speaking communities, including Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa). Daniel F. Austin's Florida Ethnobotany states that: The original "papaw" is Carica papaya.1It has had numerous local common names, many of which compare it to a banana rather than to Carica papaya. These include: wild banana, prairie banana, Indiana banana, Hoosier banana, West Virginia banana, Kansas banana, Kentucky banana, Michigan banana, Missouri banana, Appalachian banana, Ozark banana, Indian banana, banango, and the poor man's banana, as well as American custard apple, asimoya, Quaker delight, and hillbilly mango.2 The tree's scientific name (Asimina triloba) comes from the Powhatan word Assimina, which a Jamestown settler transcribed in 1612 as “wheat plum.”3 Asiminia triloba is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, producing a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit. Asimina is the only temperate genus in the tropical and subtropical flowering plant family Annonaceae, and Asimina triloba has the most northern range of all. The pawpaw is a patch-forming (clonal) understory tree found in well drained, deep, fertile bottomland and hilly upland habitat, with large, simple leaves. Pawpaw fruits are the largest edible fruit indigenous to the United States.4 The dark color and shape of the flowers is indicative of plants that are pollinated most dominantly by beetles. Traditional Cajun application of this plant is as a laxative- tea of the leaves and/or fruit eaten; Leaves also used as a poultice for unspecified reasons5 but further research documents that the leaves (in poultice form?) are applied externally to boils, ulcers and abscesses;6 White milky sap of the unripe pawpaw contains a high percentage of papain, which is used for chronic wounds or ulcers.7 The Cherokee ate the fruit and also used the inner bark to make ropes and string.8 The Seminole are documented as using a related fruit within the same family- Annona glabra-or pond apple, as a food, a plant used to make lye9, and an infusion of the flowers to treat kidney disorders.10 ”

Dr. Devon Mihesuah is a professor at the University of Kansas, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, and also a Chickasaw descendent. She has devoted her life to recovering lost knowledge of indigenous foods. ‘I have spent decades taking a look at travelers' reports, people who observed back in the 1700s, coming through,’ she said. ’Nobody ever mentioned pawpaw. They just say this strange fruit. They didn't know what to call it.’ (Choctaw word for pawpaw is umbi.) She has not found any traditional pawpaw recipes among the Choctaw, who called the Mississippi Valley and Southern Appalachia home before they were forced West. She says there's a reason for that. Like a banana, the pawpaw has a short window of ripeness. That meant it was probably consumed right on the spot--a convenient, fast food. They would just wait until the time to eat it because they don't store well‘ she said. "Maybe they dried it and it could be that they mixed with other things, which is what I like to do.’”11

Pawpaw is full of antioxidant and anti inflammatory compounds, rich in vitamins A, B, and C, and in addition to the historical uses as laxative, diuretic and wound healing applications, the seeds contain the alkaline asiminine, which is emetic and narcotic; the seeds have also been powdered and applied to hair to kill lice. The bark is a bitter tonic and contains the alkaline analobine, which is used for hypertension. However, “pawpaw does contain a high concentration of annonacin, and the crude fruit extract induces neurotoxicity and that further study is needed. In recent discussion, a link between the pawpaw and neurodegenerative disease has been suggested; pawpaw consumption may be harmful to humans because the fruit may contain nerve compound toxins.”12 The compound annonacin and dozens of other acetogenins contained in the seeds and fruit of some members of Annonaceae family are neurotoxins and seem to be the cause of a Parkinson-like neurodegenerative disease. The only group of people known to be affected by this disease live on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and the problem presumably occurs with the consumption of plants containing annonacin. The disorder is a so-called tauopathy associated with a pathologic accumulation of tau protein in the brain.

1 CRC Press, 2004, p.122.. Asimina triloba - Wikipedia
2 Schweitzer, Ally (15 September 2017). "This Once-Obscure Fruit Is On Its Way To Becoming PawPaw-Pawpular". NPR. NPR. Archived from the original on 5 April 2018. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
3 Way Down Yonder in the Paw-Paw Patch - Smithsonian Gardens (si.edu)
4 Huang, Hongwen; Layne, Desmond; Kubisiak, Thomas (July 2000). "RAPD Inheritance and Diversity in Pawpaw (Asimina triloba)". Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science. 125 (4): 454–459. doi:10.21273/JASHS.125.4.454. ^ Jump up to:a b c Pomper, Kirk W.; Layne, Desmond R.; Peterson, R. Neal (1999). "The Pawpaw Regional Variety Trial". hort.purdue.edu. Archived from the original on 2015-04-14. Retrieved 2019-09-26.
5 Elizabeth Matthews (21 September 2021). "Pawpaw: Small Tree, Big Impact". U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
6 Asimina triloba - Wikipedia
7 Healers-Garden-Brochure-Web.pdf (vermilionville.org) pawpaw
8 medicinal herbs: PAPAW - Asimina triloba (naturalmedicinalherbs.net)
9 Paw Paw facts and health benefits (healthbenefitstimes.com)
10 Hamel, Paul B. and Mary U. Chiltoskey, 1975, Cherokee Plants and Their Uses -- A 400 Year History, Sylva, N.C. Herald Publishing Co., page 4. BRIT - Native American Ethnobotany Database annona 9 Sturtevant, William, 1954, The Mikasuki Seminole: Medical Beliefs and Practices, Yale University, PhD Thesis, page 509. BRIT - Native American Ethnobotany Database annona
11 Sturtevant, William, 1954, The Mikasuki Seminole: Medical Beliefs and Practices, Yale University, PhD Thesis, page 274. BRIT - Native American Ethnobotany Database annona
12 Searching For The Pawpaw’s Indigenous Roots | WVPB (wvpublic.org)
13 Neurotoxicity of Asimina Triloba (olemiss.edu)