Paw Paw Festival
Powhatan State Park's Paw Paw Festival, new in 2023, attracted a large crowd of visitors interested in the odd looking, oddly flavored fruit of the native paw paw tree, Asimia triloba. Shaped like a potato and flavored something like a cross between a mango and a banana, the fruit is popular with raccoons and opossums as well as human foragers. But the creature who most relies on this understory fruit tree is the Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly, and JRMN set up a station at the festival explaining the relationship between this spectacular insect and its essential host.
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The adult swallowtail can nectar on any suitable flower like Asclepias tuberosa, butterfly weed.
Photo: E. Wallace
Photo: S. Shepherd
Photo: H. LeStrange
Poster: S. Reilly
Photo: H. LeStrange
Photo: E. Wallace
And what of the paw paw when it is not in fruit? It grows near water or in low-lying woods, buds forming in March. The petals of its tri-lobed flowers open in April to a beautiful deep crimson. The large brown seeds can often be found where a raccoon sat eating the fruit. The paw paw tends to form colonies, and in the fall the large, golden-yellow leaves of saplings seem to hang suspended in mid-air in the understory of the woods.
Photos: R Reilly