Pawpaw Trees at the Sanctuary

Written By Kevin Wallace

What I recently learned, and what we are doing about it

I have always liked being able to change direction when new information shows up. That is what this article is about.

For years we have been growing pawpaw trees here at Mindful Living Sanctuary. We have not sold any yet. We planted them because the trees are beautiful, because they are native, and because the fruit is one of the best-tasting things that grows in the eastern United States. Then, just recently, I learned that the ripe flesh of the pawpaw contains a compound that is under study for links to Parkinson-like illness. I did a deep dive into the published papers, and what follows is what I found and what we are doing with it.

Why we still grow them

A pawpaw is a handsome tree. The leaves are large and tropical-looking, and in spring the flowers are a deep maroon, almost black, hanging under the new growth. It is the largest edible fruit native to North America, and when the fruit is ripe the flavor is unlike anything else in a temperate orchard—custard, banana, mango, a little vanilla. People have been eating it for a long time. There are pawpaw festivals across the Midwest and Appalachia every fall, and the fruit is genuinely delicious.

It is also an important native tree. The zebra swallowtail butterfly lays its eggs only on pawpaw leaves. No other plant will do. The trees grow well in partial shade, they fit the understory of a woodland edge, and wildlife eats the fruit we do not. Those are real reasons to plant one.

I have always told people not to eat the skin or the seeds. The seeds and skin can make you sick to your stomach, and some people get a skin reaction from handling them. That advice still stands. What is new is that the soft flesh itself is not free of concern.

What the research shows

The main compound is called annonacin. It is one of a family of chemicals made only by the custard-apple family, which includes the American pawpaw and the tropical fruits soursop and sweetsop. In laboratory studies, annonacin blocks part of the energy machinery inside cells and can kill certain nerve cells. In rats, high doses produced lesions in parts of the brain that are affected in progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare Parkinson-like disease.

The strongest human evidence comes from Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, where people who ate a lot of soursop fruit and drank tea made from the leaves had much higher rates of atypical parkinsonism. That is a different plant from our pawpaw, and those people were eating fruit and leaf tea year-round for decades. There is one published case from the United States, an older man who ate a large amount of homegrown pawpaw from a family nursery for years and later developed a form of progressive supranuclear palsy. One case cannot prove cause. No large study of ordinary American pawpaw eaters has been done.

What that leaves us with is this: the compound is real and it is in the flesh. Heavy, repeated intake looks like the concern. A few fruits in October, once a year, is a different exposure from eating pawpaw most days in season, or from freezing the pulp and eating it all year. Seeds, skin, leaves, and twigs carry more of the compound than the ripe flesh, which is why I would never use the leaves as tea or sell dried fruit or extracts.

Age matters too. These diseases are rare, and risk rises after 60. Someone with Parkinson’s, progressive supranuclear palsy, or another neurological condition should simply avoid the fruit.

Please read this before you buy a tree or eat the fruit

Advisory: read before you buy or eat

Pawpaw fruit contains annonacin, a natural compound under study for links to Parkinson-like illness.

Enjoy fresh fruit in moderation, in season. Do not eat the seeds or skin. Do not use the leaves or twigs as tea.

Not recommended for people with Parkinson’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, or another neurological condition, or during pregnancy. Dried fruit, fruit leather, and frozen pulp concentrate the fruit and remove the seasonal limit.

That is the language we will put on the tag, on the invoice, and on this page if and when we sell trees. We want people to have the information in plain words before they decide.

What we are doing here

We are keeping the trees. They are beautiful, they support a native butterfly, and a few fruits in the fall is still a reasonable personal choice for a healthy adult who understands the uncertainty. We are not selling frozen pulp, dried fruit, leather, or anything made from leaves or twigs. We have not sold trees yet. If we do, every buyer will receive the advisory above in writing.

If you already have a pawpaw, or if you are thinking of planting one, the practical steps are simple. Eat the fresh fruit sparingly and only in season. Never eat the seeds or skin. Do not make tea from the leaves or twigs. Do not rely on dried fruit or frozen pulp as a regular food. And if you or someone in your household has a neurological condition, skip the fruit entirely.

I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. The science is still incomplete. What I can do is share what the papers actually show, change how we handle the trees when the information changes, and make sure anyone who considers a pawpaw from this nursery knows the risks before they take one home.

Further reading

• Potts et al., NeuroToxicology 2012 — annonacin measured in pawpaw pulp and shown toxic to cortical neurons.
• Kaas, Hillis, and Pantelyat, Neurology: Clinical Practice 2020 — the single published U.S. case of possible PSP in a heavy pawpaw eater.
• Caparros-Lefebvre and Elbaz, The Lancet 1999 — Guadeloupe case-control study of soursop and sweetsop (not American pawpaw).
• Cleret de Langavant et al., Movement Disorders 2022 — low cumulative Annonaceae intake linked to worse disease in Caribbean patients who already had parkinsonism.
• Kentucky State University pawpaw program — long history of food use; FDA reply that it had no current evidence the fruit was unsafe (not a formal safety finding).