This episode is a conversation with Shane Edwards, also known as Wild Dryad—a self-taught botanist, illustrator, and foraging educator. We explore the lost legacy of the pawpaw, America’s largest edible indigenous fruit, and how reconnecting with this tropical-flavored wild food is also a path to cultural restoration, land stewardship, and ancestral knowledge. If you’ve ever wondered what pawpaws taste like, where they grow, or why they vanished from our food system—this is the deep dive you've been waiting for.
EPISODE OVERVIEW:
- What makes pawpaw fruit so unique—and why most people have never heard of it
- How Shane started foraging and built his knowledge from backyard weeds to edible landscapes
- The cultural importance of pawpaw in Indigenous, African American, and rural traditions
- Why pawpaws disappeared from modern food systems (and how we’re bringing them back)
- Pawpaw identification tips: habitat, leaves, flowers, bark, and fruiting season
- How to ethically harvest, hand-pollinate, and propagate pawpaw trees
- The growing cultural movement to reclaim wild food access
- The risks of overharvesting and why wild tending is crucial for future abundance of wild edible plants
- What ancestral eating teaches us about ecology, resilience, and food sovereignty
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