A ‘largely forgotten plant’ gets a $1K boost
The legendary Johnny Appleseed was an actual person who did indeed travel the eastern United States planting apple trees. But his goal likely wasn’t to produce apples for eating.
In the excellent 2001 book “The Botany of Desire,” writer Michael Pollan details how apple seeds aren’t true to their parent trees and can end up growing into one of a vast range of apple varieties, most of which are inedible. Even the inedible fruits will ferment, though. So, Pollan asserts, Johnny Appleseed was more likely increasing the availability of cider, a beverage which at the time didn’t need to be qualified as “hard.” All cider could get you drunk.
But Johnny Appleseed’s efforts paid off for fruit fans, too, as at least some of those trees bore apples for eating, which like cherries, oranges and nearly every other fruit we find at grocery stores today, were introduced to North America within the last few hundred years.
There was one fruit that grew here before all the rest, and it still does — albeit mostly clandestinely. The pawpaw is sweet and delicious, its fans say, and its been falling off area trees for millennia, but you still can’t find it at the grocery store or even at a farmers market.
Flossmoor resident Tom Houlihan was at a large farmers market in Holland, Michigan, a few years ago when he asked around if there were any pawpaws to be had. It was September, when the fruits hit peak ripeness, and moist lakeside conditions there should have made for excellent growing conditions for pawpaw trees.
“They looked at me like I had two heads,” he said.
He may have had the same reaction just a few years before that, when a large ash tree in his backyard still was shading his home.
“It was much beloved,” he said, but it fell victim to the emerald ash borer and had to come down in 2013. He and his wife, Patty, decided to replace it with something more hardy and consulted a catalog from Possibility Place, a nursery in Monee that specializes in native plants. They liked what they saw, and “we ended up getting like 11 trees,” he said. Three were pawpaws.
I’ve known Tom and Patty for a long time — we worked together at Star Newspapers back around the turn of the century — but I’ve never known him as much of a gardener. So it came as a surprise when he showed up in a village of Flossmoor social media post donating $1,000 to establish a pawpaw tree population there.
As it turned out, those three trees he planted eight years ago turned into an obsession. They grew in his backyard for five years before bearing their first fruits, and even now deliver only about 20 pawpaws per year.
The tree produces red flowers in April and is pollinated primarily by flies. Houlihan didn’t take advice to place bits of raw meat amid the branches to attract more pollinators as it would likely also bring “raccoons and everything else.” But he does hit the hardware store in spring to purchase fly traps that contain an attractant, though he blocks the holes so flies aren’t actually trapped.
“I don’t know if that works or not,” he said, but something is working. “By early May I start going a little bananas. I watch them every day to see if there’s anything I can help them with and. of course, there’s not.”
It’s not something he can control, so he watches and he waits.
“These are like my children now,” Patty Houlihan said when I stopped by last week to see the trees.
“It coincides with baseball season,” Tom Houlihan said. “I pay attention all summer long and when September rolls around, the fruit is ready.
“The fruit is really interesting — very custardy, kind of bananaish. It’s very sweet, but not cloying. It’s really nice. It’s different than anything else.”
It’s good enough that pawpaws were cultivated by Native Americans for hundreds of years, writes Andrew Moore in the James Beard Award-nominated book “Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgot
ten Fruit.” Moore asserts Native Americans likely selected for characteristics such as size and sweetness, and that some of the wild stands of pawpaw trees may be directly descended from those agricultural efforts.
And it made its mark on society in the years since, with place names such as Paw Paw, Michigan and Paw Paw Woods Nature Preserve in Willow Springs, one of the oldest nature preserves in the state and home to a population of its namesake trees.
Flossmoor’s name is related to the Scottish origins of golf, not native American trees. Nevertheless, Houlihan thought it was a good place to establish a population of pawpaws trees on public land, and he dropped the cash to make it happen.
“I like it so much,” he said, so he met with Flossmoor officials including village arborist Dave Becker, “and they were excited too,” Houlihan said.
Becker said he was aware of pawpaw trees but hadn’t considered them in village planting plans before Houlihan’s donation.
“Pawpaw is a unique tree and not very common in the area,” he said. “I’ve seen them around in forest preserves and state parks, but they’re generally not very common, especially in suburban areas.
“They’re not planted very often, but if they’re planted in the right spot they can thrive and produce fruit.”
The right spots for the 17 trees the Houlihans donated include stands along the Metra tracks just south of a commuter parking lot and near a bike path bridge over Butterfield Creek.
“It’s a tree I’ve always enjoyed, but it wasn’t a main consideration for trees to plant,” Becker said. “So Tom put together the idea and got the project done with his generous donation . ... It definitely adds to the tree diversity in town.”
Now there will be several patches of pawpaws around Flossmoor, and Houlihan is delighted.
“They’re a largely forgotten plant, and they defy domestication,” he said. “They’re different and a little quirky. I run into people every once in a while who are excited about them. I hope the people (here) will like it and hope it works as an experiment.
“When I’m awake at 3 a.m., I think to myself every town should have pawpaws.”
He said he’s seen books of pawpaw recipes showing how to make pawpaw pudding, and ice cream, and even beer. But unlike Johnny Appleseed, Tom Houlihan isn’t interested in getting drunk off the fruits of his efforts.
He just likes pawpaws. “I’m glad to have a few more around here,” he said.