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Pawpaws are best eaten raw, but are also crafted into foods like ice cream and soda. The custard-textured pulp tastes similar to a cross between a banana and mango. Karen Caspary/UTIA

Is that a pawpaw in your pocket? Come celebrate the fruit of the woods this weekend.

KNOXVILLE — The city celebrates a ubiquitous but largely underappreciated native forest fruit this weekend with the second installment of the Pawpaw and Wildcraft Festival.

There will be local food, craft beer and live music as Knoxville joins the list of cities celebrating the eastern North American trees.  The event is set for 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 30 at Trailhead Beer Market, 1317 Island Home Ave. In South Knoxville. 

Knoxville attorney and activist Chris Irwin, one of the principal organizers (along with Joy Grissom and Lenny Zonda), told Hellbender Press to expect an even bigger and better paw-paw-palooza this year. He is a proponent of the tree as a both rural and urban food source for wildlife and humans. Pawpaw grows in the understory, and is actually thriving in most areas as farmland returns to woodlands (it also has a natural toxin that repels deer), but climate change will alter forest types. Either way, Irwin said, it's an underutilized resource that should be better ballyhooed.

The festival features other native plants, wildcrafting discussions, urban and rural gardening, pawpaw fruit sharing and seed swapping. Wildcrafting is the practice of sustainably harvesting uncultivated plants, herbs, roots and fungi from their natural or wild habitats for food, medicine or crafts.

Swap seeds and stories and sample local pawpaws at first Pawpaw Festival

KNOXVILLE — Multiple wildcrafters, seed collectors and general treehuggers — and wild critters — here and throughout the Southern Appalachians are really getting into wild pawpaw trees and their fruit.

Asimina triloba, the American papaw, is native to hardwood forest understories of the eastern United States, including the rich oak, hickory and maple forests of the Appalachians. It can be cultivated on private land or urban food plots, and of course grows richly in area forests. Its fruit is widely described as custard-like in texture.

There is a growing critical mass of pawpaw fans to meet occasionally and swap seed and its Knoxville’s turn to recognize the humble yet mighty local fruit. The first of what is planned to be an annual event is set 6 p.m. Aug. 31 at the Trailhead Beer Market, 1317 Island Home Ave.