Tastes Like Banana Custard. It's Ripe in the Woods RIGHT NOW. Lewis and Clark Lived on It.

📖 The Nature’s Lost Vault Book Is Now Available. Learn more: https://naturelostvault.com/book.html Right now, in the shady bottomland along creeks and slow rivers across the eastern United States, the largest fruit native to North America is hanging ripe on a small tree that most people walk straight past. Split the skin and the inside is soft and golden, with the texture of custard and a flavor somewhere between banana, mango, and vanilla. It is one of the great wild edible fruits of this continent, a true foraging prize that comes ripe for only a few short weeks in late summer and early fall. Two hundred years ago it fed the Lewis and Clark expedition on their way home. Thomas Jefferson planted it at Monticello. Native peoples tended it for thousands of years. And then, in a single lifetime, this native fruit slipped out of the American diet and off every grocery shelf in the country. This is the pawpaw, Asimina triloba, the largest edible fruit native to North America and the only cold-hardy member of the tropical custard apple family. This documentary traces how a wild fruit that tastes like banana custard fed explorers, presidents, and whole nations, why it vanished from stores while the banana took its place, and how you can still find it ripe in the woods this very month. You will learn where pawpaws grow, how to recognize the tree by its big tropical-looking leaves, how to tell when the fruit is ripe, and why its short shelf life made it impossible for the modern grocery system to carry. We cover the nutrition, the deep history, the ice-age origins of the fruit, and the quiet revival led by Kentucky State University and breeders like Neal Peterson who are bringing this forgotten fruit back. If rediscovering the wild food and forgotten plants growing around you is your kind of story, subscribe to Nature's Lost Vault. The next vault opens soon. Sources - Moore, Andrew. Pawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015. - Moulton, Gary E., ed. The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001. - Pomper, Kirk W., and Desmond R. Layne. "The North American Pawpaw: Botany and Horticulture." Horticultural Reviews 31 (2005): 351-384. doi:10.1002/9780470650882.ch7 - Layne, Desmond R. "The Pawpaw [Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal]: A New Fruit Crop for Kentucky and the United States." HortScience 31, no. 1 (1996): 20-24. - Peterson, R. Neal. "Pawpaw (Asimina)." In Genetic Resources of Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops. Acta Horticulturae 290 (1991): 567-600. - Archbold, Douglas D., et al. "Pawpaw [Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal] Fruit Ripening. I. Ethylene Biosynthesis and Production." Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 130, no. 4 (2005): 638-642. doi:10.21273/jashs.130.4.638 - Archbold, Douglas D., et al. "Pawpaw [Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal] Fruit Ripening. II. Activity of Selected Cell-Wall Degrading Enzymes." Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 130, no. 4 (2005): 643-648. doi:10.21273/jashs.130.4.643 - Ratnayake, Senanayake, et al. "Evaluation of Various Parts of the Paw Paw Tree, Asimina triloba (Annonaceae), as Commercial Sources of the Pesticidal Annonaceous Acetogenins." Journal of Economic Entomology 85, no. 6 (1992): 2353-2356. doi:10.1093/jee/85.6.2353 Callaway, M. Brett. The Pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Frankfort, KY: Kentucky State University, 1990. - Kentucky State University Cooperative Extension Program. "Pawpaw." Kentucky State University Land Grant Program, Frankfort, KY. - United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. Plant Guide: Common Pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Washington, DC: USDA NRCS. #Foraging #WildEdibles #NativePlants #Homesteading