contains() function works very much similar to 'like' of SQL. You can use it as follows:
>>> df =pd.DataFrame({'A':['apple1','apple2','banana','grape','apple3'], 'B':[i*2 for i in range(1,6)], 'C':[i*3 for i in range(1,6)]})>>> df A B C0 apple1 2 31 apple2 4 62 banana 6 93 grape 8 124 apple3 10 15>>> df['A'].str.contains('apple')0 True1 True2 False3 False4 TrueName: A, dtype: bool>>> df[df['A'].str.contains('apple')] A B C0 apple1 2 31 apple2 4 64 apple3 10 15>>>