Pawpaw!.... George Washington's favourite fruit

Having lived in the Carolinian Forest Zone for the vast majority of my life, and knowing all of the native tree species (and collected an entire municipal inventory!), I still hadn't seen a pawpaw growing wild in Ontario. The story of the first pawpaw I saw is sort of interesting.... We were eating fish and chips outside at a small park in Point Pelee and our son (who was about 18 months at the time) was walking around the picnic table and I noticed he had something in his hand - it was a pawpaw fruit! I looked up and we were sitting next to three pawpaw trees which had unripe fruit on them. Later that summer when my son and I were walking on the North Shore Trail in Cootes Paradise (Royal Botanical Gardens), we came across a large grove of pawpaw growing about 50m from the shores of the marsh - have a look at the picture.

Pawpaw grove on the North Shore Trail of the RBG