Walk into any American supermarket today and you’ll find the same fruits stacked neatly in the produce aisle. Apples from Washington. Grapes from California. Bananas from Ecuador. Yet America’s wild lands hold dozens of native fruits with flavors so complex they make store-bought options taste like cardboard.
These regional treasures haven’t disappeared from the earth, exactly. Industrial farming, supermarket convenience, and the rise of a few commercial fruit varieties pushed these regional, heirloom, and wild-hybrid fruits into obscurity. Many were deemed too “ugly,” too “fragile,” or simply not profitable enough to mass-produce. Some have shelf lives measured in days rather than weeks. Others grow in thorny thickets or muddy swamps where mechanical harvesters can’t reach. Here’s the thing, though. What grocery stores rejected, local food lovers are quietly bringing back.
Pawpaw: The Custard Apple of Appalachia
This is easily the strangest fruit most Americans have never tasted. The pawpaw produces the largest edible fruit of any native plant in North America! Pawpaw fruits have a sweet, custard-like flavor somewhat similar to banana, mango, and cantaloupe, varying significantly by source or cultivar, with more protein than most fruits. It is the largest edible fruit native to the United States. The fruit is indigenous to 26 states from northern Florida to Maine and west to Nebraska.
Let’s be real, the problem with pawpaws is timing. Fresh pawpaw fruits are commonly eaten raw; however, once ripe they store only a few days at room temperature and do not ship well unless frozen. Ripe pawpaw fruits have a very short shelf life of only 3-5 days. This makes pawpaws an unlikely product in most grocery stores. They grow in 25 states in the eastern United States, ranging from northern Florida to southern Ontario (Canada) and as far west as eastern Nebraska, and are hardy in USDA Zones 5 to 8.
Kentucky State University (KSU) has a pawpaw research program which seeks to develop methods and varieties to increase the viability of the pawpaw to be grown as a commercial fruit crop. In 2016, KSU-Benson™ joined Kentucky State’s 2010 release, KSU-Atwood™, from their pawpaw breeding program. With a flavor combining those of banana, pineapple, and mango, KSU-Atwood shows promise as a commercially available cultivar. Retail prices for fresh pawpaws at farmers’ markets and upscale grocery stores range from $3 to $8 per pound. The prices are even higher when bought online. Frozen pawpaw pulp can sell for $6 per pound or more.
American Persimmon: The Wild Southern Sweet
The American persimmon was relished by Native Americans, but has never been embraced as a commercial fruit crop because many cultivars are too soft for commercial shipping. Honestly, that’s grocery store logic for you. American persimmon is a native fruit. Its native range is New England to Florida and west to Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kansas. American persimmons are smaller, often no larger than a golf ball, with a flavor that evolves dramatically as the fruit ripens. However, once fully ripe, the fruit transforms into a richly sweet and complex treat, often described as tasting like dates or caramel.
Here’s where it gets tricky for newcomers. Unripe fruits are highly astringent, leaving an unpleasant, puckering sensation in the mouth due to tannins. Care should be taken to only harvest ripe fruit, as unripe fruit are powerfully astringent and unpleasant to consume. In order to ensure ripeness, you can wait until after the first frost of the year. Commercial varieties include the very productive Early Golden, the productive John Rick, Miller, Woolbright and the Ennis, a seedless variety.
It tolerates almost any soil, except those that are waterlogged, and is virtually insect- and disease-free. Unfortunately, the soft, ripe fruit does not ship or store well and should be processed as soon as possible. It may be used in persimmon puddings, jellies, jams, fruit butters, pies, candies, ice creams, and many other uses. That’s the brilliance of regional fruits, by the way. They force you to actually do something with them.
Mayhaw: The Jelly Maker’s Gold
Drive through southern Louisiana in May and you might witness something unusual. People in boats, scooping red berries from the water’s surface. Mayhaw is native to North America and grows wild in the Southern United States, spanning from North Carolina south to Florida, and west to Texas. Several species within the Crataegus genus are categorized as Mayhaw in North America, and these species are some of the only flowering trees to naturally thrive along the edges of swamps, marshes, lakes, rivers, wetlands, and bayous. The fruit ripens in late April through May, thus the name may-haw.
The mayhaw is a native American fruit tree that grows in shallows along rivers, in creek bottoms, and bayous throughout the southern United States. Largely ignored by early botanists, explorers, and even native Indians because of their bland taste and difficult-to-reach locations, the berries produced by this thorny tree are most often collected out of the water from boats and used primarily to make jelly. With a flavor that varies from mildly sweet to tart, mayhaws are rarely eaten raw but are highly prized for making sauces, wines and the beloved Southern favorite – mayhaw jelly.
Mayhaws are the fruit of the native thorny hawthorn tree. In 2014 the mayhaw tree was adopted as the official state fruit tree of Louisiana and mayhaw jelly is one of the two official state jellies. The trees produce spectacular blooms in early spring followed by a tart, red berry that is popular for making jelly. One of the most well-known festivals occurs in Colquitt, Georgia, also nicknamed the “Mayhaw Capital of the World.” The National Mayhaw Festival has been held for over forty-two years and occurs every April in the historic downtown square. The celebration attracts 5,000 to 10,000 people and features live entertainment, chefs, and novelty food vendors selling homemade Mayhaw jams, baked goods, and other Mayhaw-centric items. Today, thanks to renewed interest in forgotten native American fruits, and due to improved biological techniques, mayhaw trees have become highly desirable with gardeners not only for cultivation but for ornamental applications as well. And although native mayhaw trees are armed with an abundance of thorns, some new thornless varieties have been developed.
Beach Plum: The Atlantic Coast’s Hidden Gem
Beach plum is a species of plum native to the East Coast of the United States. It is a choice wild edible and its few pests and salt tolerance make it a resilient fruit crop for degraded lands and urban soils. Often found in the dunes and coastal plains of Cape Cod, this deciduous shrub has a native range along the east coast of the US from Maine to Maryland. Its specific Latin name, “maritima,” aptly describes its habitat, meaning “relating to the sea.” A hardy species, it is extremely tolerant of cold, drought, and salt spray, though it does not prefer to be crowded by other species and requires full sunlight to thrive.
I think what makes beach plums fascinating is their stubborn refusal to play by conventional farming rules. Taste of ripe fruit is prevailingly sweet, though individual bushes range in flavor and some are sour or slightly bitter. About the size of grapes, beach plums are much smaller in size when compared to the longer cultivated Asian varieties found in the supermarket, though are resilient to many North American stone fruit pests, such as black knot fungus. The native beach plum is commonly found across the coasts of the northeastern United States but ranges from Newfoundland to North Carolina. Unsurprisingly, as a beach tree, it was one of the first New World plants the colonists saw when they came ashore in the 1600s but was documented even earlier by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano who referred to them as “damson trees” in 1524.
The species is native to the coastal mid-Atlantic and Northeast region. Since 2005, growers and researchers have made important strides in developing beach plum into a crop suitable for commercial production. A number of cultivars have been selected for larger and better-flavored fruit, including Resigno, Jersey Gem (Rutgers), ECOS, Eastham, Hancock and Squibnocket. Beach plums will be attractive primarily to customers wishing to make processed foods and drinks from them. Products made from beach plums are often purchased by visitors frequenting shore locations. Taste testing surveys have shown that market demand would extend beyond the coastal areas if supply were available.
Chickasaw Plum: The Southern Hedgerow Staple
Smaller than its beach plum cousin, the Chickasaw plum grows inland throughout the South and Midwest. Native Americans cultivated this fruit extensively, spreading it far beyond its original range. The trees form thickets along fence rows and abandoned fields, creating natural hedges that burst with white blossoms each spring.
The fruits ripen to shades of red or yellow and measure roughly half an inch to an inch across. Their flavor sits somewhere between tart and mildly sweet. Rural families historically made them into preserves and pies, though the small size and abundance of seeds made processing labor intensive. Today, permaculture enthusiasts and native plant advocates are rediscovering Chickasaw plums for wildlife habitat and erosion control.
Unlike many forgotten fruits, Chickasaw plums remain relatively easy to find growing wild. They tolerate poor soil, drought, and temperature extremes from Texas to Pennsylvania. The trees sucker freely from their roots, eventually forming dense stands that provide excellent bird habitat. Several improved cultivars exist with larger fruits and better flavor, though wild specimens still dominate most landscapes where they occur.
Wild Black Raspberry: The Bramble Nobody Plants
Every kid who grew up near the woods knows about wild black raspberries. Those thorny tangles along logging roads and forest edges produce small, intensely flavored berries that stain your fingers purple for days. Yet supermarkets rarely carry them, relying instead on larger, blander cultivated varieties bred for shelf life rather than taste.
The difference in flavor between wild and cultivated raspberries is honestly shocking. Wild black raspberries pack concentrated sweetness with earthy, almost wine-like undertones. They’re smaller than their domestic cousins, about the size of your fingertip, and the soft drupelets collapse easily when picked. That fragility makes commercial production nearly impossible, at least using conventional methods.
These brambles thrive across the eastern United States, from Georgia north through New England and west to the Dakotas. They colonize disturbed areas, spreading through underground rhizomes and arching canes that root where they touch soil. Wildlife depends heavily on the fruits, which ripen in midsummer when few other foods are available. Foragers prize them for jam, wine, and baking, though picking requires patience and tolerance for thorns. Some nurseries sell named cultivars selected for larger fruit and vigor, but most people simply locate patches growing wild and return each July to harvest.
Conclusion
These forgotten fruits tell a story about what we’ve lost chasing efficiency. These forgotten fruits once filled pies, flavored preserves, and offered nutritional diversity that’s now rare in modern diets. They demand patience. They resist mechanization. They spoil quickly and ship poorly. Those are precisely the qualities that make them worth rediscovering.
Small farms, native plant nurseries, and specialty growers are slowly rebuilding supply chains for regional fruits. Farmers markets now feature pawpaws in September and beach plum jam year-round. Research programs at universities continue breeding improved varieties that balance commercial viability with authentic flavor. The comeback won’t happen overnight, but it’s happening.
Next time you spot an unfamiliar fruit at a local market, take a chance on it. You might discover flavors that supermarket produce can’t match. Have you ever tasted any of these regional varieties? What surprised you most?
