LOCKPORT, N.Y. – When Kyle Townsend and Mitchell Gunther decided to start an orchard in this town just east of Niagara Falls two years ago, they quickly dismissed the idea of growing conventional fruit. Warmer winters, followed by snap freezes, were devastating apple and peach crops. They nixed grape vines and berries, which invasive pests were targeting.

“Just hear me out,” Townsend told his business partner, “we’re putting in a pawpaw orchard.”

Kyle Townsend shows the inside of a pawpaw he got from a nearby farm in Lockport, N.Y. Lauren Petracca for The Washington Post

Pawpaws are North America’s largest native fruit – and are exceedingly rare, found mainly in the wild across 26 states or in small orchards in Appalachia, where the trees have historically thrived. Praised for their flavor, which is sometimes described as a cross between a mango and banana, the custard-like fruit is an ideal spoonable dessert. You won’t find them in the supermarket – but some plant breeders are trying to change that.

Western New York is considered the very fringe of the pawpaw tree’s northern range. But as climate change brings warmer temperatures and more erratic weather to the region, a small but growing number of farmers are drawn to pawpaws’ low maintenance and adaptability.

In the wild, they grow from northern Florida to southern Ontario, tolerating a broad range of conditions and often spreading to form thickets. They are the only temperate genus of the otherwise tropical custard apple family – a traveler that made its way north long ago and, farmers hope, might be a way reduce their risk as climate change increasingly threatens their crops.

“Their popularity is really exploding,” said Blake Cothron, owner of Peaceful Heritage Nursery in Stanford, Kentucky, which sells pawpaw trees. Pawpaws are vulnerable to snap frosts, like apple and peach trees. But unlike them, pawpaws have the unusual ability to produce more flowers if they lose their first set of blooms to a cold snap, he explained, making them hardier.

Pawpaws have developed a cult following among some backyard farmers and horticulturists, for whom the idea of restoring native fruit and nut trees to an overheating planet is urgent. Now the fruit’s resilience is giving it a wider audience in places it wasn’t common before, among both hobbyists and those who make a living growing fruit.

“Backyard growers are planting pawpaws all over the country, that continues to grow. But small farmers are also looking at growing pawpaws as a supplement to their income or to diversify their offerings,” Cothron said.

The reasoning has as much to do with farmers’ bottom line as the climate: The unpredictable bouts of extreme weather that have made pawpaws an appealing alternative are hurting some traditional crops.

Last year, a record-breaking spring frost killed most of the Northeast’s peach blossoms and hurt its apple crop, prompting agricultural commissioners in 10 states to ask the federal government for aid. The University of Vermont described it as “the worst freeze/frost damage observed in more than 25 years in the industry.”

Anya Stansell, a Cornell University fruit-production specialist, said she knew farmers who are giving up on their peach and apricot trees “because you get a good crop so few years.”

When the latest agricultural census surveyed pawpaw production for the first time in 2022, it tallied only 65 farms in New York state. More than 1,600 farms grew apples. Yet Stansell, who works with pawpaw growers in the state, is confident their numbers will grow. Demand for trees has soared, she said, doubling or even tripling the cost over the last several years.

Brandy and Nigel Sullivan know this problem too well.

The couple bought a 64-acre orchard in Mexico, New York, a town about half an hour north of Syracuse, with the dream of drawing in pick-your-own enthusiasts and selling fruit at farmers markets. After discovering many of their apple trees were diseased, the couple attended a pawpaw growers conference hosted by Cornell University and quickly pivoted. They planted 20 pawpaw trees two years ago and are now on a wait list to buy more.

“We’re sticking with things that, as the weather changes and we get more floods and warmer temperatures, are going to be the best for our orchard,” Brandy said.

Patting down the soil of a freshly planted pawpaw tree. Lauren Petracca for The Washington Post

Townsend and Gunther said they also see growing pawpaws as a hedge against climate change. Several years after they first sketched out the idea of an orchard on a coffee-stained piece of graph paper, it has become real: Swiftwater Farm is growing 60 pawpaw trees today, with plans to quadruple that number. The pair hope to fill the rest of their 44-acre property with a no-till vegetable garden, a native plant nursery and a wild landscape where visitors can walk through a food forest planted with American persimmons and Canadian plums, as well as pollinator-attracting shrubs and flowers.

As temperatures warm, and growing zones in the United States shift to reflect the changes in where plants can survive, Townsend and Gunther anticipate their orchard will become as favorable a place for pawpaws to grow as Kentucky or central Pennsylvania.

“We actually have the same growing zone now as some orchards in Ohio,” Townsend said, “so I think that’s a tell of what’s to come.”

Townsend cuts open a pawpaw to eat. Pawpaws taste like a mixture of mango and banana. Lauren Petracca for The Washington Post

Though people in rural areas have long foraged for pawpaws, inspiring the nickname “hillbilly banana,” it’s only in recent years that the fruit has become a sought-after star of farmers markets. From mid-August to October, the height of the season, pawpaw lovers flock to festivals in the Midwest and East Coast, eager to sample the fruit before it disappears.

As word gets around that he’s growing pawpaws, Townsend said his phone is ringing with calls from interested buyers. Earlier this year, a chef contacted him looking for 500 pounds of fruit. Craft breweries are eager to buy huge quantities of pawpaws to make sour beers and meads, he said, and there’s already a market for frozen pawpaw pulp for smoothies and ice cream.

“Sometimes it feels like a race to get trees in the ground, to get fruit production to where you want it – as fast as you can,” he said. The trees can take three years to produce fruit, sometimes as long as eight. Would-be buyers “are kind of just waiting,” he said.

Townsend waters a freshly-planted pawpaw tree at Swiftwater Farm. Lauren Petracca for The Washington Post

But if growers are eager to bring pawpaws north, farmers further south are beginning to wonder if climate change will hurt their crops. A severe drought in Ohio this year has farmers complaining of earlier-than-expected harvests and small, sour fruit. Some have also attributed the poor crop to heat stress, raising questions about whether the fruit can survive the effects of climate change in Appalachia, its cultural heartland.

Pawpaws have their share of skeptics. For as hardy as the pawpaw tree is, the fruit bruises easily and can go from ripe to mush on the counter in several days. Refrigerating them extends their life by a few weeks, but not enough to counter their reputation as a fragile oddity.

“They’re almost ephemeral,” said Adam D’Angelo, a plant breeder who is working to develop new pawpaw varieties that have a longer shelf life, while preserving the unique flavor. Project Pawpaw, his crowdfunded effort to bring pawpaws to supermarket produce aisles, has a research orchard in New Jersey and is planning another in Wisconsin, where D’Angelo is based, and where it has historically been colder than pawpaws would like.

Yet, “they grow just fine up here,” he said.

D’Angelo said the United States needs more commercial pawpaw orchards if the fruit is to survive its increasing popularity. Otherwise, he worries pawpaw fanatics will continue to forage for them, picking wild stands clean and damaging the trees.

“If we’re trying to get more people into this, then we need to start growing them, we can’t just decimate wild stands,” he said.

In Lockport, Townsend and Gunther said they see themselves as part of that effort.

In late September, Townsend pointed to a section he calls the orchard’s northern research plot, where they were planting sweet-tasting pawpaw cultivars from Appalachia grafted onto northern pawpaw rootstock. Mixed in were a handful of wild pawpaw trees they were growing to ensure their genetic survival.

“We’re trying to build a little refuge here,” Gunther said. “We have every intention of preserving as much of the ecology of western New York here as possible.”