ANN ARBOR, MI -- Tucked away off Ellsworth Road in Ann Arbor, a small grove of trees is home to Michigan’s most famous “secret” fruit: the pawpaw.
While most pawpaws — also called the Michigan banana — are picked in the wild, this patch is one of the few in the state lovingly tended to.
Meet Marc Boone, the owner of one of the only cultivated pawpaw orchards in Michigan.
Boone first began planting pawpaw trees in the early 1980s, but was unsuccessful in keeping his early orchards alive. In 1987, he planted 300 pawpaw trees, expecting most of them to die. Today, rows of trees extend far back into his property, creating a fragrant orchard of the unusual fruit.
Descriptions of pawpaws are often grounded in other fruits. It looks like a cross between a mango and papaya but has the mild flavor of a banana with the sweetness of cotton candy.
The fruit is soft enough for Boone to pull apart in the orchard, one of his preferred ways of eating them. He will separate the fruit, using his teeth to eat its flesh and spit the seeds on the ground.
“If I’m making a bowl and trying to be uptown and fancy, I’ll squeeze it in a bowl, separate the seeds and put some strawberries and raspberries on top,” Boone said, adding that refrigerating will dull the taste of the fruit. “…Pawpaw has a lot of flavor in the smell.”
Pawpaw trees typically grow in the deep woods, away from the light needed to encourage fruit production. Wild patches are commonly found among riverbanks or train tracks, Boone said. His orchard receives enough light to produce fruit, although a growing walnut tree next to the grove has recently encouraged the trees to climb upward.
“They behaved themselves and stayed short for a long time,” Boone said.
Boone grew a majority of his orchard from seedlings harvested from foraged pawpaws, grafting from grown trees to encourage fruit production. Although he grew up on a farm, Boone was a plumber before his retirement roughly six years ago, making his pawpaw orchard more of a passion project.
Although pawpaws are most commonly known among the foraging community, increased interest in the outdoors during the pandemic also piqued people’s curiosity about the fruit, Boone said.
In fact, his sale to the public began by accident. Boone had approached Zingerman’s to see if the restaurant group would be interested in selling pawpaw ice cream, and the company began letting people know about his orchard.
Boone now sells pawpaws to a variety of farm stops in the Ann Arbor area, as well as opens his orchard to customers interested in picking their own. The pawpaw season runs between August and October, depending on the year.
People are welcome to pick persimmons, which Boone also grows. While he has a fondness for pawpaws, Boone’s interest in persimmons is more intense. Crossing the line from interest to obsession is as easy as walking the several feet from the pawpaw orchard to the persimmon grove, he said.
Although they look like tomatoes, persimmons are a sweet fruit reminiscent of gummy candy that can be eaten raw or turned into jam or fruit leather. Boone also grows a variety of apples, with a focus on antique varieties.
An uptick in interest among consumers for pawpaws has correlated to more growers, Boone said. Other pawpaw orchards are cultivated in Owosso and Marshall and even local nurseries like Ann Arbor’s Nature and Nurture offer pawpaw trees.
“I think people just became interested in less mainstream fruit,” he said.
Despite their growing popularity, the delicate nature of pawpaws, which have to be transported in a single layer due to their fragility, means they always remain a local delicacy.
“You can freeze persimmons or ship them all over the world, but pawpaws I think are always going to be more localized,” Boone said. “…You either know somebody or you find it in a farmers market.”
Marc Boone’s pawpaw orchard, 100032 W. Ellsworth Road, Ann Arbor, is available for customers from 3 to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and 2 to 6 p.m. on Sundays. Pawpaws are $4 per pound for U-Pick or $8 per pound if harvested. Persimmons are $8 per pound for U-Pick or $16 per pound if harvested.
Boone’s pawpaws can also be found at Ann Arbor’s Argus Farm Stop, Chelsea’s Agricole Fresh Food Market and Manchester’s Acorn Farmers’ Market and Cafe.
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