I absolutely love this tree. The leaves smell like gasoline, the fruit ripens for an incredibly short window once a year, the flowers are pollinated by fruit flies, the leaves make it look like a tropical plant… it’s just so weird and beautiful. And because they’re best eaten ripe off the tree, they’re a great reminder to enjoy the little things as they happen, because some things just can’t be saved for a rainy day.

Pawpaws are awesome. Go try to find them around April. The flowers are easy to identify. Once you know what a tree looks like, they are super easy to find year round.

If you live somewhere on the eastern half of the US, and you have an overabundance of deer, you probably have pawpaws around. Deer don’t eat pawpaw seedlings, so pawpaws have a competitive advantage in eastern US forests devoid of predators.