Of Mastadons!

The Pleistocene Epoch is the time period in Earth’s history that spanned from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. We’re not sure who determined this, but the International Chronostratigraphhic Chart here is filled with big words that seem pretty official, so let’s start the story at this reference point.

In our absolutely unprofessional opinion, there are two hallmarks of the Pleistocene Epoch. One is ice. Extensive ice sheets and glaciers cyclically formed and covered much of Earth’s landmass. After all, the professionals here do place the ‘Ice Age’ in this period. In any case, the other hallmark is megafauna. This word certainly lives up to the imagery it conjures. The megafauna that roamed included things like mastodons, mammoths and – wait for it – giant ground sloths. These animals weighed thousands of pounds and maintained their metabolic rhythm by eating plants — the organic, non-GMO kind. For some perspective, some random person here estimated the calorie burn of a mammoth to be about 100,000 calories per day. Some sketchy math on our TI-85 calculator suggests that’s roughly equivalent to 128,200 blueberries per day. So, how did these healthy, plant-based megafauna do it? There had to have been ancient fruit that were sized in proportion to these mega huge animals, right? Well, yes. There were many, and some are still amongst us. Some like the Honeylocust, the Kentucky Coffeetree, and the Osage orange tree have their own strange history and delights highlighted here. However, the one that makes us the most excited is the Pawpaw (Asimina triloba).

And Modern Obscurity!

There exists a legend that George Washington’s favorite fruit was the Pawpaw. According to the keepers of his Mount Vernon estate here, our man George wrote in his diary on March 7th, 1785 that he: Planted all my Cedars, all my Papaw, and two Honey locust Trees in my Shrubberies and two of the latter in my groves–one at each ‘side’ of the House and a large Holly tree on the Point going to the Sein landing. Did you catch that? Yep, it sounds like he was a Pawpaw OG.