CARICACEA, 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 7 
In all tropical countries the Pawpaw is universally cultivated for its fruit’ and in waste places 
near human habitations it springs up in great abundance. 
In appearance one of the most remarkable of the plants of the New World, the Pawpaw at once 
attracts the attention of travelers in the tropics, and after Oviedo y Valdes wrote the first account” of 
it during the first half of the sixteenth century many early explorers and many botanists before the 
time of Linnzus described it. 
Indies was the true home of the Pawpaw, that it had spread south- 
ward across the continent by cultivation, and that it was nowhere 
truly wild on the mainland, although they had seen near Tarapota 
in the eastern Peruvian Andes, at the height of two thousand feet 
above the sea, the staminate plants growing in a continuous thicket 
of several acres in extent. In the forests of this region, neverthe- 
less, no truly wild plants could be found. 
The Pawpaw was carried to Asia before the end of the sixteenth 
or very early in the seventeenth century no doubt by the Portu- 
guese, for in 1626 Petro de Valle brought the seeds from the East 
In 1651 these were 
described and figured by Columna in the Rerum Medicarum Nove 
Indies to Naples, where they produced plants. 
Hispanic Thesaurus of Francisco Hernandez, 870, as Papaya Ori- 
entalis, sive Pepo arborescens. ‘Twelve years later Dr. Paludanus 
wrote, in the third edition of Linschoten’s Histoire de la Naviga- 
tion (chap. liv. 98), published in 1638: “Il y a aussi un fruict ap- 
porté des Indes Occidentales par les Isles Philippines & Mallacca 
e de 1a es Indes, appellé Papaios, ayant presques la forme d’un 
Melon, et est de la grosseur d’un poing.” Boyn, who first visited 
southern China in 1643, found the Pawpaw in great abundance on 
the island of Hainan and in the province of Canton, and in his 
Flora Sinensis he described it among other Chinese plants as Fan 
yay cv ou le Papaya. (See Thévenot, Relations de Divers Voyages 
Curieux, i. [Flora Sinensis, 19].) Rheede in 1678 (Hort. Ind. Mailab. 
i, 21, 23, t. 15) and Rumpf in 1741 (Herb. Amboin. i. 145, t. 50, 51 
[see, also, Burmann, Thes. Zeylan. 184]) showed that the Pawpaw 
was of American origin. 
continued to regard the Pawpaw as an East Indian plant until Robert 
Brown, arguing in 1818 that it had no Sanscrit name, that as Rumph 
In spite of this testimony many authors 
had pointed out the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago regarded 
it as an exotic plant, and that all the other species of the genus 
belonged to the New World, showed conclusively that it was Amer- 
ican and not Asiatic or African. (See Tuckey, Narrative of an Ex- 
pedition to explore the River Zaire, usually called the Congo, Appx. 
v. 471. See, also, A. de Candolle, Géographie Botanique, ii. 917 ; 
Origine des Plantes Cultivées, 233. — Wittmack, Bot. Zeit. xxxvi. 
532. — Solms-Laubach, Bot. Zeit. xlvii. 709.) 
It is doubtful if Carica Papaya is a native of Florida and has 
not been introduced there on account of the value of its fruit ; 
yet if not indigenous it has become naturalized there as it has in 
so many other warm countries. 
in Florida in 1774 by William Bartram, who found it growing 
The Pawpaw was first noticed 
apparently in abundance on the east coast south of Mosquito Inlet, 
either near Hillsborough River or at the head of Indian River 
(Travels, 131). 
whites, the Orange was naturalized at this time, and the Pawpaw 
In this region, which was then uninhabited by 
might have been brought there by the Spaniards when they 
brought the Orange. It is now very common in the wooded hum- 
mocks in the neighborhood of Bay Biscayne, often remote from 
human habitation. Bay Biscayne, however, for more than a cen- 
tury has been frequented by boatmen from the Bahama Islands, 
who if they had carried “pawpaws with them to eat might have 
left the seeds on the shore. The probability of recent introduc- 
tion into eastern Florida is, moreover, heightened by the fact that 
Bernard Romans in The Natural History of East and West Florida, 
published in 1775, makes no mention of the Pawpaw, although he 
visited those parts of Florida, both on the east and west coasts where 
it is now naturalized, and paid particular attention to the trees of 
the peninsula. On the other hand, Dr. Robert Ridgway, who found 
the Pawpaw in 1897 growing on Chandler’s Hummock in the 
Everglades near the northeast edge of Lake Okechobee, a region 
difficult of access and rarely visited, writes to me that “there is not 
the slightest question that this tropical species is indigenous to this 
I may add that I was unable to find it 
except at Fort Myers, where it was cultivated, in any part of Lee 
part of south Florida. 
County, not even in the vicinity of Fort Thompson, nor in the Big 
Cypress District. I believe, therefore, it is confined to the imme- 
diate vicinity of the Everglades, which are extended in a narrow 
strip known locally as the ‘Saw Grass’ region, along the western 
side of Lake Okechobee, quite to the mouth of the Kissimmee 
River.” It is due to these observations made by Dr. Ridgway that 
Carica Papaya is admitted into The Silva of North America. 
1 Forskal, Fl. 4igypt. Arab. p. exxii.— Loureiro, Fl. Cochin. ii. 
628. — Blume, Bijdr. Fl. Ned. Ind. ii. 941. — Roxburgh, Fl. Ind. 
ed. 2, iii. 824. — Wight, Zl. Ind. Bot. ii. 34, t. 106,107. — Wight & 
Arnott, Prodr. Fl. Nepal. 352. — Blanco, Fl. Filip. 803; ed. 3, iii. 
212. — Hasskarl, Cat. Pl. Bogor. 188; Pl. Jav. Rar. 180.— Bojer, 
Hort. Maurit. 277.— Miquel, Fl. Ned. Ind. i. 697.— Van Nooten, 
Fleurs Jav. t. — Hillebrand, Fi. Haw. Is. 189.— Bretschneider, 
Jour. North China Branch Roy. Asiatic Soc. n. ser. xxv. 8300 (Bo- 
tanicon Sinicum, pt. ii.). 
The fruit of the Pawpaw has been much improved by cultiva- 
Individual fruits with thick 
succulent flesh and weighing ten or twelve pounds are sometimes 
tion and selection in the West Indies. 
produced on cultivated trees, while on the plants which grow spon- 
taneously in Florida they are often not larger than a hen’s egg, 
with thin dry scarcely edible flesh. The fruit is eaten either raw 
The seeds have 
an aromatic pepper-like taste and are considered anthelmentic; 
or boiled with sugar, and acts as a mild cathartic. 
and the juice of the unripe fruit has been employed in the treat- 
ment of psoriasis and other cutaneous affections. (See Descourtilz, 
Fil. Med. Antill. i. 215, t. 47, 48. — Ernst, Jour. Bot. iii. 319 [ Vene- 
zuelan Medicinal Plants].—Guibourt, Hist. Drog. ed. 7, iii. 266, f. 
659. — Baillon, Traité Bot. Med. 833, £. 2507-2511. — Faweett, 
Economic Plants, Jamaica, 23.) 
? « Del 4rbol que en esta Isla Espafiola aman papaya, y en la 
Tierra-Firme los llaman los espafioles los higos del mastuerco, y en 
la provingia de Nicaragua llaman 4 tal drbol olocoton.” (Oviedo, 
Hist. Gen. Nat. Ind. lib. viii. eap. 33.) 
Mamera Lusitanorum, Clusius, Cure Posteriores, 41, f. 
Arbor Platani folio fructu peponis magnitudine eduli, C. Bauhin, 
Pinaz, 431. 
“This fruit is (which a man would not thinke) a remedie against 
the flux, and so are their Papaies, a fruit like an Apple of a water- 
ish welsh taste.” (Layfield in Purchas his Pilgrimes, iv. 1172 [4 
large Relation of the Porto Rico Voiage].) 
