6 CIRCULAR NO. 119, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



might bear apples. He would probably be unbearably ridiculed, 

 however, if more than half of the seedlings of the apple were males 

 and he set out an orchard with the full understanding that from 60 to 

 75 per cent of the trees would have to be cut out as soon as they bore 

 flowers. This, nevertheless, is the condition which up to the present 

 time has been imposed on the cultivator of the papaya. 



In experiments winch were carried on in Jamaica some years ago, 

 as described by Kilmer, 1 acres of ground were planted with thousands 

 of papaya plants in which the males predominated in the ratio of over 

 15 to 1. 



In an experiment carried on at the Subtropical Plant Introduction 

 Field Station last year, out of 60 plants 60 per cent were males 

 and only one tree is producing fruit of a size and quality closely 

 similar to the fruit from which the seed was taken. From a modern 

 horticultural standpoint, in other words, a small orchard of 60 trees 

 was set out and only one good tree secured. 



VARIETIES CROSSED WITH WILD MALES. 



This condition of extreme variability has doubtless been increased 

 by the fact that almost everywhere in the Tropics there are wild 

 seedlings whose abundant pollen is carried by insects to any near-by 

 plantations of good varieties and behig, perhaps, prepotent, fertilizes 

 quite generally the female flowers of the good varieties. It is a 

 striking fact that the seeds from a single large-fruited papaya will 

 produce a large proportion of plants which bear small fruits of the 

 wild type. That this condition of variability of the papaya is general 

 throughout the Tropics may be assumed from the extremely varied 

 statements with regard to the edibility of this remarkable fruit. 



Mr. A. Smith, in Lindley's Treasury of Botany, 1899, page 224, 

 makes the statement that "the ripe fruit is seldom eaten raw, al- 

 though with the addition of pepper and sugar it is said to be agreea- 

 ble." Johnson's Gardener's Dictionary, 1905, page 176, makes the 

 remarkable statement that "the papaw fruit (Carica -papaya) is 

 eaten, when cooked, hi some parts of South America, but not much 

 esteemed by Europeans." Watt, speaking of East India condi- 

 tions, states 2 that "the ripe fruit is eaten by all classes and esteemed 

 innocent and wholesome. In some localities, such as Hazaribagh 

 in Chota, Nagpur and Gauhatti in Assam, the fruit is large and very 

 sweet; in others it is small, coarse, and hardly edible." 



The opinion generally prevails that to obtain good fruit it is nec- 

 essary to remove a majority of the male trees. In other words, 

 although the papaya is perhaps as old a cultivated plant as the date 

 palm, and although it is also dioecious, the inhabitants of tropical 



i Kilmer, F. B. Op. cit., p. 285. 2 Watt, Sir George. Op. tit., p. 270. 



[Cir. 119] 



