4 CIRCULAR NO. 119, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



and led to its cultivation by the peasants of Montserrat and latterly 

 by the Singhalese 1 of Ceylon, who gathered the juice for papain 

 manufacture. 



THE PAPAYA HERETOFORE PROPAGATED FROM SEED. 



Notwithstanding the remarkable productivity of the papaya, that 

 its fruit is a delicate, wholesome, delicious food for which there is a 

 constant demand, and that it probably is the most precocious of any 

 of the tropical or subtropical fruit trees, it seems to have been always 

 propagated from seed wherever it has been grown in the Tropics; 

 and this, too, despite the fact that the species is dioecious as a rule, 

 producing the male and female flowers on different plants, and the 

 character of the seedlings is often so variable that out of a hundred 

 seeds planted, all coming from the same fruit of good quality, not over 

 two or three will produce as good fruit as the one from which the 

 seeds came. More than half of the seedlings may be males and of 

 the remainder most of them may be of poor quality. Notwithstand- 

 ing these facts, which would seem to have made it almost imperative 

 that an asexual method of propagation be devised, tropical horticul- 

 turists seem to have looked upon it up to the present time as a plant 

 which could only be grown from seed. The greenhouse gardeners, 

 on the other hand, who have grown the plant for experimental pur- 

 poses, seem to have discovered that the species was easily grown 

 from cuttings, for we find in Johnson's Gardener's Dictionary, 

 London, 1905, page 176, for example, that the papayas are classed 

 as "stove" evergreen trees which can be propagated by means of 

 "cuttings of ripe shoots in sandy soil under a bell glass and in sweet 

 bottom heat; rich, loamy soil." In Bailey's Cyclopaedia of American 

 Horticulture, volume 1, 1910, page 245, there appears a note written 

 by Mr.E.N.Reasoner to the effect that "sometimes small branches 

 form, and these may be cut off and as readily rooted as most tropical 

 decorative plants, providing the cutting is not too young and tender." 

 It seems rather remarkable, in view of such statements as these in 

 standard works on horticulture, that Macmillan, 2 of Ceylon, should 

 make no mention of an asexual method of reproduction, that Kilmer, 

 in his remarkable story of the "paw-paw," published in 1901, 3 should 

 dismiss the question of a rational propagation of the tree with the 

 remark that "methods of artificial fertilization and budding, such as 

 is found in the propagation of lemons and oranges, are now in the 

 experimental stage," 4 and that Higgins should make the statement 



i Willis, J. C. Agriculture in the Tropics, Cambridge, 1909,'p. 95. 



s Macmillan, H. F. A Handbook of Tropical Gardening and Planting, Colombo, Ceylon, 1910, 524 p., 

 illus. 



3 Kilmer, F. B. The story of the paw-paw. American Journal of Pharmacy, v. 73, p. 272-285, 330-34*. 

 383-395, 1901. 



* Kilmer, F. B. Op. cit., p. 285. 



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