THE PAPAW THICKET. 



299 



veterans that have protected these, their foster chil- 

 dren. For some reason the tree is seldom successfully 

 transplanted; but the seeds, if planted in the fall, as 

 Nature sows them, will sprout in a year, and soon 

 thrive as strong and healthy little trees, although they 

 require generally eight or ten years of sapling prepa- 

 ration before they begin to bear fruit. My great- 

 grandfather's woods, in southwestern Ohio (not far 

 from the homestead) , now cut down, at one time had 

 so many papaw-trees in its underbrush that it was 

 known everywhere as "the papaw woods." The 

 clumps of papaw bushes in it used to be so dense and 

 the papaws themselves so numerous that bushel basket- 

 fuls have been gathered there, and wagons have been 

 driven in to take them away, the ground being literally 

 covered with the fallen fruit. I know, too, of more 

 than one other woods that might well be called "the 

 papaw woods," so dense in them are the thickets of 

 papaw-trees, almost like groves of them, with the great 

 greenish-yellow, esculent, fleshy, pod-like forms hang- 

 ing in the air, or lying among the drifted leaves of 

 their own parents, nibbled perchance by a rabbit or 

 eaten into by insects. 



The papaw in the early days was more of a feature 

 of the woods than it is now, and the fruit was more 

 generally eaten. I know of one singular old character 

 who would gather a basketful of luscious papaws and 

 then trudge twelve miles to the city with it to sell, 

 along with some hickory nuts and walnuts, as his stock 

 in trade; and he never had any trouble in getting rid 

 of them. Papaws can still be seen for sale in the stalls 

 of the Cincinnati markets in the fall of the year, and 



