SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
CARICA. 
FLowers regular, monecious or polygamo-diccious, in axillary cymose panicles; 
calyx minute, 5-lobed; petals 5; stamens 10; filaments in two series, free; ovary 
1-celled; ovules numerous. Fruit baccate, fleshy. Leaves alternate, long-petiolate, 
palmately lobed or digitate, rarely simple, destitute of stipules. 
Carica, Linnzus, Gen. 309 (1737). — Meissner, Gen. pt. ii. Vasconcellea, Saint-Hilaire, Mém. Acad. Sci. xv. 324 
89. —Endlicher, Gen. 933.— Roemer, Fam. Nat. Syn. (1838). 
ii. 121. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 815. —Solms-Lau- Vasconcellosia, Caruel, Nuov. Gior. Bot. Ital. viii. 22 
bach, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. iii. pt. vi. a, 98. (1876). 
Papaya, Adanson, Ham. Pl. ii. 357 (1763). — A. 1. de Jus- Mocinna, La Llave, La Naturaleza, vii. Appx. 70 (not 
sieu, Gen. 399.— Baillon, Hist. Pl. iv. 320 (excl. Jaca- Lagasca nor Bentham) (1885). 
ritia). 
Small short-lived trees, filled with bitter milky juices, with erect simple or rarely branched stems 
composed of a thin shell of soft fibrous wood surrounding a large central cavity divided by thin soft 
cross partitions at the nodes and covered with thin green or gray bark marked by the ring-like scars of 
fallen leaf-stalks, and stout soft fleshy roots, or rarely herbaceous, with tuberous roots. Leaves crowded 
toward the top of the stem and branches, alternate, large, flaccid, long-petiolate, subpeltately palmately 
nerved, usually deeply and often compoundly lobed, or occasionally digitate and seven or eight-foliate, 
or rarely ovate-lanceolate, destitute of stipules. Flowers white, yellow, or greenish white, in axillary 
cymose panicles, the staminate elongated pedunculate and many-flowered, the pistillate abbreviated 
and few usually three-flowered, generally unisexual and diccious, occasionally polygamo-dicecious, each 
flower in the axil of a minute ovate acute flat bract. Staminate flower: calyx minute, five-lobed ; corolla 
salverform, gamopetalous, the tube elongated, five-lobed, the lobes oblong or linear, valvate or contorted 
in estivation ; stamens ten, inserted on the throat of the corolla, in two rows; filaments free, those of 
the outer row alternate with the lobes of the corolla, elongated, the others alternate with them, abbre- 
viated; anthers attached below the middle, introrse, two-celled, erect, opening longitudinally, often 
surmounted by their slightly elongated connective ; pollen grains globose, grooved ; ovary rudimentary, 
subulate. Pistillate flower: calyx minute, five-lobed, enlarged, thickened and persistent under the fruit ; 
corolla polypetalous ; petals five, linear-oblong, erect, ultimately spreading above the middle, deciduous ; 
staminodia wanting. Ovary free, sessile, one-celled or more or less spuriously five-celled by the projection 
inward of the five parietal placentas; style wanting or abbreviated; stigmas five, linear, radiating, 
dilated and subpalmately lobed at the apex, or simple and stigmatic over the whole upper surface; 
ovules indefinite, inserted in two rows on the placenta, anatropous, long-stalked, micropyle superior, 
raphe ventral. Hermaphrodite flower: corolla gamopetalous, tubular-campanulate, the lobes erect and 
: 1 The stems of Carica caudata (Brandegee, Zoé, iv. 401 [1894]) of Lower California are described as herb from eighteen 
inches to three feet tall, and as produced from tuberous roots. 
