It's so funny the way we call things whatever seems to be familiar. The garden and woods behind the garden have blackberries and wild bananas, when really, the blackberries aren't berries, and the wild bananas (also called pawpaws) definitely aren't bananas.
A real "berry" is the single ovary of a flower with a big fleshy outside and the seed in it, like a currant, grape or avocado. The blackberry is actually an "aggregate fruit" made up of lots of ovaries with seeds.
A wild banana - usually called a pawpaw - is the largest indigenous (meaning it's native, or originates from) fruit in North America. Last year the kids and I found a ripe pawpaw in the woods - it tastes just like a banana! The the zebra swallowtail caterpillar eats ONLY the leaves of trees in the pawpaw family. There's a chemical in the pawpaw leaves that makes the zebra swallowtail taste bad, so it's less likely to be eaten by predators. Just like a milkweed plant makes the monarch butterfly taste bad. Fascinating, eh? When you're done working the garden, take a walk down the Pindell Bluff Trail (starts just to the right of the small barn by the bee hives) and look on the left side of the trail. See if you can find a pawpaw fruit - they're difficult to find! If it's hard, it's not ripe, and it won't ripen once you pick it (we tried).
 |
Blackberries in the garden
|
 |
| Pawpaws along the Pindell Bluff Trail, behind the barn |
