6 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CARICACEA, 
enlarged and cordate at the base, which, continuing to grow, sometimes become three or four feet in 
length before the leaves fall. The flowers, which often begin to appear on plants only three or four 
feet high and a few months old, are pale yellow, with minute or foliaceous calyx-lobes,’ and are produced 
continuously throughout the year, the males in many- flowered racemose cymes borne on slender 
spreading or pendulous peduncles which vary from four to twelve inches in length, and the females 
in one to three-flowered short-stalked cymes.? The staminate flowers are fragrant and contain large 
quantities of nectar; and their corolla is from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a quarter long, 
with a slender tube and acute lobes which in the same cluster are in some flowers dextrorse and in 
others sintrorse in zstivation. The anthers are oblong, orange-colored, and surmounted by the rounded 
thickened end of their connective, those of the inner row being almost sessile and one third larger than 
those of the outer row; these are rather shorter than their flattened filaments which are coyered, like 
the connectives of the anthers, with long slender white hairs. The rudimentary ovary is subulate and 
much shorter than the tube of the corolla. 
lanceolate erect petals free to the base, dextrorsally contorted in estivation, and reflexed above the 
The pistillate flower is about an inch long, with linear 
middle at maturity; it is destitute of staminodia, and the ovary is ovoid, ivory white, slightly and 
obtusely five-angled, one-celled, and narrowed into a short slender style crowned by a pale green 
stigma divided to the base into five radiating lobes, which are dilated and deeply three-cleft at the 
apex; the ovules are raised on long stalks. The fruits, which hang close together against the stem at 
the base of the leaf-stalks, are obovate, ellipsoidal, and obtusely short-pointed, and vary in color from 
yellowish green to bright orange-color; on trees cultivated in the tropics they are sometimes from ten 
to twelve inches long, while on the trees which grow spontaneously in southern Florida they are 
Their thick 
skin closely adheres to the firm sweet rather insipid flesh which varies greatly in amount and quality on 
occasionally four inches in length and three inches in thickness, although usually smaller. 
different plants and forms a thin layer outside the central cavity, which is filled with a mass composed 
of the nearly black seeds. These are full and rounded and about three sixteenths of an inch in 
length ; when the fruit is full grown but still green the outer rugose portion of the testa is ivory 
white, very succulent, and easily separable from the smooth paler chestnut-brown lustrous interior 
portion, but as the fruit ripens the outer part of the testa turns black, and, becoming dry and leathery, 
adheres closely to the mner portion which closely invests the thin lustrous light red-brown inner seed- 
coat. The fruit decays on the tree, and, then drying up, finally splits open, letting the seeds fall to 
the ground. 
Carica Papaya now inhabits southern Florida from the southern shores of Bay Biscayne on the 
west coast and Indian River on the east coast to the southern keys, growing sparingly in rich hummocks 
under the shade of Live Oaks, Mulberries, Bay-trees, and Magnolias ; it is very common in all the 
West Indian Islands, in Mexico, and in the tropical countries of South America; and it has now 
become naturalized in most of the warm regions of the Old World? 
1 The calyx-lobes of Carica are described as minute, but on 
specimens taken from two trees growing in hummocks near Miami 
on the shores of Bay Biscayne, Florida, from which the plate in 
this work has been made, two of the calyx-lobes of both staminate 
and pistillate flowers were much enlarged and foliaceous. 
2 In Florida, so far as I have been able to learn, the staminate 
and pistillate flowers of wild plants of Carica Papaya are produced. 
on different individuals, but on cultivated plants in Florida and in 
other countries they are often andro-diecious ; that is, the male 
plants occasionally bear at the apex of the principal branches of 
hep Senfil 2 pl Ab 
flowers which differ from the pis- 
tillate flowers chiefly in their tubular-campanulate corolla and in 
the ten or rarely five stamens inserted in two rows on its throat. 
The fruit, which is developed from these hermaphrodite flowers 
and which hangs on long peduncles, is usually smaller than that 
produced on the pistillate trees, and is nearly always unsymmetri- 
cal. (See Correa de Mello & Spruce, Jour. Linn. Soc. x. 1 [Notes on 
Papayacee].—H. O. Forbes, Jour. Bot. xvii. 313.— Matthews & 
Scott, Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, xi. 287.) Andro-dicecious flowers 
of Carica Papaya, the pistillate trees bearing also a few hermaphro- 
dite flowers, have been noticed by Ernst in Caracas (Jour. Bot. iv. 
81) on Carica Papaya; and by Baillon on a plant cultivated in 
Paris (Bull. Soc. Linn. Paris, No. 84, 665). 
5 Cultivated for its edible fruit no doubt long before the dis- 
covery of America by Europeans, and easily scattered by the facil- 
ity with which its seeds germinate in waste places, the original 
home in tropical America of Carica Papaya cannot be determined 
with any certainty. Correa de Mello & Spruce ([. o. 8), who 
had excellent opportunities for studying the flora of large regions 
of continental South America, believed, however, that the West 
