TJie Pawpaw. 263 



and that, to many, this fruit is exceedingly distasteful : but still there are 

 enough on every hand, in the region where the pawpaw perfects itself, to 

 sanction our own most extravagant estimates. 



The pawpaw comes of a good lineage. It is the only North-American 

 representative of the A?to?iacece, the famous custard-apple family of the 

 tropics. How this solitary genus should have been so widely parted from 

 its allies, we leave the Darwinians to explain. We have heard the emi- 

 nent professor of botany in Harvard descant upon the luscious richness 

 of the tropical custard-apple ; and, when we found our own pawpaw worthy 

 of all his praise, we felt almost indignant over this curt description (Gray's 

 " Manual," page 17), — " yellowish, sweet, and edible in autumn :" but our in- 

 dignation was turned into compassion when we concluded, from the dimen- 

 sions of the fruit that accompany this description, that he knew no other 

 specimens than those which had struggled through a dying life in the 

 Cambridge Botanic Garden. It would be but little farther from justice to 

 characterize the orange from specimens ripened in the bay-window of a 

 New-England farm-house. 



Follow the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude, from the Alleghanies to the 

 Mississippi, and you will traverse the home of the pawpaw. Within a 

 degree or two on each side, almost all its chosen haunts will be found. 

 There are outlying groves east of the mountains (a post-office in Michi- 

 gan rejoices in its euphonious name) ; but in the southern portions of 

 Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, it 

 occurs in the greatest abundance and perfection. 



The tree itself is very attractive. Its clean, well-kept bark, its wealth of 

 foliage, its soldierly bearing, all conspire to make it in itself a most desira- 

 ble addition to the horticulturist's resources. But, of the fruit, what worthy 

 account can be given ? At the last Ohio State Fair, a painting in oil, of a 

 bunch of pawpaws, was exhibited, admirable alike for fidelity and execu- 

 tion. With the aid of engravings drawn from such or more direct sources, 

 a description might have some chance of success ; but we must venture 

 without any such extraneous assistance. 



From one to seven fruits in a cluster, each measuring four, five, six, or even 

 seven inches in length, and from two to three inches in diameter, and very 

 like to a banana in shape, depending (in their ripened state) from a leaf- 



