250 



CARICACEAE. 



Family 1. CARICACEAE Dumort. 



Papaw Family. 



Shnibs or trees, with milky sap. Leaves ample, broad, palmately 7-9- 

 lobed. Flowers unisexual or rarely perfect. Calyx short. Staminate 

 flowers with a salver-shaped corolla, its tube slender, the lobes 5, valvate 

 or convolute. Stamens 10, inserted in the throat of the corolla; filaments 

 short; anthers adnate to the filaments, 2-celled. Pistillate flowers with 5 

 distinct petals and no staminodia. Ovary compound, 1-celled, or some- 

 times spuriously 5-celled, free, sessile; stigmas 5, sessile; ovules numerous, 

 in two or many series on the 5 placentae. Fruit a large, fleshy berry. 

 Seeds numerous, flattened, with a roughened testa; endosperm fleshy; em- 

 bryo axile. There are two genera, the following, composed of about 25 

 species of tropical and subtropical distribution, and Jacaratia of tropical 

 Africa and America. 



]. CARICA L. 



Characters of the family. [Named from the fancied resemblance of the 

 fruit to that of the Fig.] Type species: Carica Papaya L. 



1. Carica Papaya L. Cus- 

 tard Apple. Papaw. (Fig. 

 273.) A small tree, with a simple 

 wand-like stem, 8°-15° tall, leafy 

 at the top. Leaves large, thick, 

 suborbiciilar in outline, 10'-20' 

 broad, mostly palmately 7-lobed, 

 I^ale or glaucous beneath, each lobe 

 pinnately lobed, the segments ob- 

 tuse or acute, or the larger ones 

 acuminate; petioles stout; stami- 

 nate flowers in slender panicles 

 often 2° long; calyx of the stami- 

 nate flowers about 1" high, that 

 of the pistillate flowers 3"-5" 

 high, the lobes longer than the 

 tube; corolla yellow, that of the 

 staminate flowers aljout 1' long, 

 its tube slender, dilated near the 

 top, its lobes lanceolate or elliptic- 

 lanceolate, barely one half as long 

 as the tube; corolla of the pistil- 

 late flowers longer, the petals dis- 

 tinct, lanceolate, twisted ; fruit 

 oblong to subglobose, 2'-6' long, 

 yellow or orange, with a milky 

 juice, often larger in cultivation. 



Hillsides, waste and cultivated grounds. Naturalized. Native of the West In- 

 dies and souttiern Florida. Flowers in summer and autumn. Cutlivated for its 

 valuable edible fruit, from which papain is obtained. In Bermuda many staminate 

 trees have fertile flowers below the staminate and sometimes bear small fruits 

 abundantly. Recorded as introduced in 1616. 



