by Nan Chase
They suggest working with established pawpaw breeders, using containerized rather than bare root plants if possible, and mulching well to keep the young roots cool and damp. Mature trees bear larger fruit in full sun, so be patient until all conditions occur.
That’s just what I’m doing with my two small pawpaws—different varieties for required cross-pollination—as they get established in the shade of my shagbark hickory.
Pawpaw nourished the Native American peoples, and then colonial settlers discovered its delicious, creamy fruit. The foliage turns golden in fall. Photo by Scott Bauer, United States Department of Agriculture.
Pawpaw Ice Cream“Derek Morris”
3 cups milk
3 cups cream
3 cups sugar
3 lemons or 2 oranges (optional)
2 cups mashed pawpaw pulp, seeds removed
Mix together milk, cream, and sugar. Place in ice cream maker and turn until mushy. Add juice from citrus, if using, and pawpaw pulp. Proceed until frozen.
This ice cream is delicious with or without the citrus juice.
Recipe courtesy of Derek Morris.
Good to the last spoonful, pawpaw fruit tastes a bit like mango and banana. Photo by R. Dennis Hager, courtesy of R. Neal Peterson.
A family heirloom, this pawpaw tree in southern Illinois shows off masses of bright golden fall foliage. Photo by Rhonda Ashby Coulter.
Landscape highlights
Cold-hardy small tree
Golden fall foliage
Zebra swallowtail butterfly habitat
Edible highlights
Fresh fruit from the tree
Baked into bread or pudding
Frozen for year-round use
Where they grow best
In dappled shade, forest understory
In well-drained soil rich in organic matter
In humid climates with cold winters
How to grow them
With trees planted young so long taproot grows undisturbed
With other varieties for cross-pollination
For fall fruit as frost occurs
In a small yard, as an anchor plant that won’t grow too large
Near a patio for pleasant shade and visual interest
Persimmon
When I was a girl in Fresno, we had a failing-to-thrive persimmon tree in our small front yard. It bore one persimmon every year—I remember its velvety burnt-orange mass—and every year my mother baked one batch of persimmon cookies. They were large cookies the color of faded pumpkins, with a creamy-crumbly texture I liked.
So maybe it was nostalgia that led me to plant my own persimmon tree a few years back, although the tree’s natural beauty and wonderful fruit naturally make it a contender in the edible landscape. My tree is coming along nicely, in a sloping bed with half a day’s shade.
The persimmon—the native American species—shares many characteristics with the pawpaw: both have gorgeous yellow leaves in fall, both are small trees that live in moist woodlands, both have long taproots that make them difficult to transplant except when young, and both have fruit that’s considered a delicacy but is difficult to pack and ship. Like the pawpaw, persimmon is a flowering plant that spreads without cultivation, thus a wildflower.
There are two main kinds of persimmons generally considered too astringent to eat until fully ripened: the Asian persimmons, Diospyros kaki, and the American persimmons, D. virginiana. Additionally, non-astringent Asian varieties, with crunchy rather than jellified innards, can be sliced and eaten without waiting.
Asian persimmons grow smaller—twelve feet or so—and are less cold-hardy than American persimmons. Their main advantage comes in the fruit, which can be picked half-ripened and left to finish off the tree; the seedless fruit is processed more easily.
American persimmons grow to fifty feet or more, although they are commonly pruned lower, and they can survive temperatures to -25 degrees F. The fruit has seeds and must ripen completely on the tree, which usually requires heavy frost. Then the delicious pulp carries overtones of cinnamon and allspice, or as pawpaw and persimmon grower Derek Morris describes it, “Pumpkin mixed with honey and plum” or “wet, spicy apricot.”
Hybrid species have been developed in Russia blending desirable characteristics of Asian and American persimmons, and Texas persimmon, D. texana, also bears edible fruit and has distinctive scaling bark.
All are members of the ebony family, with extremely hard wood used historically for high impact situations: golf “woods,” billiard cues, and, when there was still an American textile industry, shuttles for looms.
The thick bark of the American persimmon, whose natural range is the eastern United States south of Pennsylvania, has a pleasing incised “block” pattern. The trees are not fussy about soil, and they thrive along roadsides and on waste ground. Fragrant white springtime flowers grace the branches.
Tannins make persimmon fruit challenging to use. Unripe, the fruits are bitter and disagreeable. Ripe and freed from these acids’ effects, the sweet, soft pulp can be used a number of ways: dried, frozen, and, most commonly, baked into puddings and breads.
North Carolina horticulturist Derek Morris, who grows many pawpaw trees in his yard, also raises some twenty persimmons. He eats the pulp right from the skin.
Persimmons are difficult to ship, since they ripen best on the tree. After frost comes, the flavors deepen and take on spicy overtones. Photo © iStockPhoto/Impactimage.
Persimmon Puddin’
3 tablespoons butter
2 cups raw persimmon pulp
3 beaten eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1-1/2 cups milk
Melt butter in a shallow baking dish. In a mixing bowl, blend pulp with beaten eggs. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate mixing bowl; then add dry ingredients alternately with milk to persimmon mixture. Pour into baking dish with melted butter. Bake at 300 degrees F for about 1 hour.
Reprinted with permission from Southern Appalachian Mountain Cookin’: Authentic Ol’ Mountain Family Recipes, ©2004, APS, Inc.
Persimmon Bread
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 sticks butter (12 tablespoons), softened
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Dash salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts, such as walnuts or pecans
1 cup persimmon pulp
Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Line loaf pan with waxed paper.
Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs, flour, baking soda, salt, nuts, and persimmon pulp until combined.
Bake 70 minutes, just until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Recipe courtesy of Derek Morris.
Persimmons appear on the holiday table in the form of bread, pudding, or even a garnish for poultry or meat. Photo by Marcus Nilsson.
Landscape highlights
Golden fall foliage
Winter wildlife food source
Edible highlights
Flavorful fresh or cold-ripened fruit
Baked into pudding or bread
Where they grow best
In dappled shade or full sun
In fertile, well-drained soil
In climates with frost
How to grow them
With trees planted young so long taproot grows undisturbed
For fall fruit as frost occurs
As focal point for fall and winter interest
Spaced 10–12 feet apart
With small spring bulbs around them
What kind of persimmon?
American persimmons are more cold-hardy, surviving to -25 degrees F, Zone 4, while Asian persimmons do well to about 0 degrees F, Zone 7. Less well-known Ukrainian persimmons are hybrids of the two.
The American persimmon
varieties grow taller than Asian varieties, as tall as thirty feet compared to about twelve feet. The fruit ripening habit is different too. American persimmons are generally too bitter to eat until fully ripe on the tree, while most Asian persimmons can be picked half ripe to finish ripening later.
Prickly Pear, Yucca
Nothing says “Keep Out!” like a big prickly pear cactus, but yucca comes close.
I love these plants in the edible landscape for their year-round character and color, their toughness in any climate, and their surprising beauty.
Both yucca, commonly Yucca filamentosa, and prickly pear species of the genus Opuntia grow well from the Southwest to New England to the Dakotas, adding architectural grandeur and a sense of security.
They offer year-round appeal: soft new growth and gorgeous flowers in spring, vigorous texture in summer, unusual fruits in fall, and a place for snow to rest sculpturally in winter.
And while it may come as news, both yucca and prickly pear have delicious edible parts.
Yucca has a strong tuberous taproot and multiplies steadily but not uncontrollably. Its crown of tough foliage is softened by curly filaments along the edges of each spine.
It is perfect as a two-foot-high ground cover in garden wastelands. In my yard, yucca occupies the dusty heights above several tall rock walls where nothing else takes hold.
I have found it easy to transplant yucca and begin new beds. All it takes is a deep hole and one big drink of water to get acclimated; after that the yuccas are carefree.
Once established, in a few years, the blossoms begin. And they are spectacular: five-foot-tall spears that rise from the ground, phallus-like, and spring open like Christmas trees decked with heavy, waxy, bell-shaped blooms. This is gardening with style!
A friend from Mexico craves these blossoms, for the petals and unopened buds are delicious fresh in salads or sautéed in oil with onions, garlic, and chilies to make relish. Later in the season, the ripe fruits (drooping fleshy pods) are also edible, although many gardeners trim the spent flower stalks before that.
I like cooked yucca root, especially when it’s prepared by an expert Peruvian chef like the one at La Canela in Rockville, Maryland. There my parents and I recently enjoyed fried yuccas with Huancaina sauce—feather-light golden slices with a smooth, fiery sauce—and “yuquitas”—balls of mashed yucca stuffed with crabmeat, baked, and served with tomato sauce.
Prickly pear cactuses—a group of similar species—present the greatest contradictions in gardening.
The flowers can stop you in your tracks with their diaphanous layers of yellow or pink, packed against spring’s light-green vegetation; they remind me of ballet dancers’ twirling skirts turned upside down, or sea anemones.
The egg-size mature fruits, called “tunas” in Spanish, have their own kind of rough beauty, appearing as clumps of pink-red pears that glow from an iridescent under-layer. The fluffy pastel interior tastes like candy; and the experience of eating it is accentuated by the large, crunchy black seeds known in folklore for their beneficial heart and blood properties.
Even the flat, paddle-like leaves, called “nopales” (no-PAHL-es), are edible, once the spines are removed, and have long formed an important part of the indigenous Southwest diet.
But handling prickly pear cactus can be terribly painful (thus their utility as security fencing, whereas the yucca only looks fierce). The short spines seem to seek out any bit of unprotected skin, and they are slender and difficult to remove; it can take weeks for one to work its way out.
A practiced hand can quickly cut out the spines from a nopal, and then it’s ready to cook, broiled or boiled for salads or stews. That same hand can also slice open a ripe tuna to extract the pulp. But until you have mastered the art of handling prickly pears barehanded—and I have watched it—wear gloves and use tongs.
With those warnings, go ahead and add prickly pear to the edible landscape. You will always see beauty and nourishment where others might only see cactus.
Prickly pear cactus exhibits an astonishing range of colors and shapes during the year. By fall, deep pink edible “pears” have replaced the yellow flowers. Photo by Nan K. Chase.
Grilled or Broiled Yucca with Huancaina Sauce
Wash and peel several large yucca roots. Slice lengthwise and extract the fibrous core. Cut roots into finger-size pieces, cover with water in a saucepan, bring to the boil with salt, and simmer 30 minutes, or until just firm. Drain.
Brush with vegetable oil and broil or grill until golden and sizzling, about 3–4 minutes per side, watching carefully to prevent burning. Serve immediately with Huancaina sauce for dipping.
Countless versions of Huancaina sauce call for 2–3 fresh, seeded aji chilies, chopped coarsely and sautéed with onions and garlic and then added to a blender with a cup or more of mild white cheese and up to a cup of milk, with added oil to produce a thick, creamy consistency.
Landscape highlights
Evergreen screening, security
Spring, summer flowers
Cold-hardy, winter interest with snow
Bright pink prickly pears in winter
Edible highlights
Yucca flowers and buds in sauces, salads
Yucca root fried or baked
Prickly pear fruits and de-spined paddles
Where they grow best
In full sun, although yucca can grow in cooler, moist conditions
In thin, sandy or poor soil with occasional rain or watering
Along walls or on terraces where water drains quickly
How to grow them
Planting yuccas from young divisions of the long taproot; dig deep hole, fill with water, tamp soil around plant
Planting prickly pear stem cuttings from paddles in shallow sand, moistening and firming plants in place as gradually spreading wildflowers taking several seasons to flower and bear fruit
With lacy or vining plants like nasturtium
Near liatris or other spiked plants
Rose
The rose is a botanical mothership with connections to much of what grows in our gardens: everything from nectarines to strawberries.
“Queen of flowers!” one source exclaims.
Roses have universal appeal for the intense perfume and entrancing beauty of their flowers. They also help pollination among other plants.
There are wild roses native to North America, or introduced and naturalized, which are adaptable from seaside to mountaintop. And there are hybridized roses, with thoroughbred refinement, suitable only where the climate cooperates and people can pamper them.
Wild roses, to make the situation more complicated, can be quite good in the garden—or highly destructive.
Let’s agree to cheat and consider several native North American roses and several imported roses together (imported, that is, during colonial times or earlier and then spreading) before choosing the most useful and least intrusive for the edible landscape.
First, a word about why roses should be considered edible at all.
For one thing, rose petals have a light, sweet flavor and can be eaten fresh in salads, where they add unexpected color; one writer pairs them with cucumbers for a visual treat. The young shoots of some roses, carefully cleaned, are also edible, with a pleasant crunch.
It is the rose’s fruit that merits attention and that has a long, nutritionally important role in civilization, especially in northern climates where other fruits are difficult to grow, and during wartime, when sources of vitamin C are interrupted.
The small fruits called rose hips have the highest vitamin C content of any fresh food, and while they can be eaten raw, more commonly rose hips are cooked before use. The seeds, which are hairy and give bad tickles to the throat, are almost always either cooked and strained out or just spit out. Rose hips can be processed—strained for juice—to make jelly, syrup, and sauces. That goodness can be bottled and kept all year. Rose hips and rose petals also produce specialty wines, cordials, and liq
ueurs.
Hips are pulpy, seed-filled pods, which in late fall grace rose bushes with their red or orange colors (even dark blue). The hips vary in size and shape, usually not much larger than a grape. Covered in frost in a landscape otherwise drained of color, they make a spectacular display.
Unlike the more demanding hybrid roses, wild roses have spent tens of millions of years adapting to local conditions. They are nearly disease free and pest free. They require little pruning or fertilizing, can withstand temperatures well below zero, and can grow in poor soils.
In some cases, wild roses grow to ten or fifteen feet high, forming impressive hedges. In all cases, before planting wild roses check with local agricultural officials to see if your choice is even legal—some wild roses are considered noxious and are banned. Of genus Rosa the main offenders are multiflora roses, including Cherokee rose (ironically, not a true native). Don’t plant these.
Do investigate other species of Rosa for what they can add to your own edible landscape: dog rose, prairie rose, Carolina rose, glauca rose, nootka rose (a western native), and countless crossbred native roses.