THE PAPAYA FAMILY 



CARICACE^ Dumortier 



HIS family comprises 2 genera, including about 22 species of trees or 

 tree-like herbs, peculiar to tropical America. They are valuable on 

 account of their juicy fmit and the digestive properties of its milky 

 sap. 



The Caricacea have large, alternate, palmately lobed, stalked leaves. The 

 flowers are rarely perfect, usually monoecious or dioecious. The calyx is short. 

 The staminate flowers have a gamopetalous corolla, with an elongated tube and 

 broad 5-lobed Hmb; the 10 stamens are inserted in the throat of the corolla in 

 2 series, one shorter than the other; anthers adnate to the filaments, 2-celled and 

 introrse. The pistillate flowers have a polypetalous corolla of 5 erect petals, 

 mostly spreading above the middle; there are no stamens nor staminodes; the 

 ovary of 5 carpels is free, sessile, i -celled, or appearing as if 5-celled, without a 

 style, the 5 distinct stigmas being sessile; o\ailes many, in 2 rows. The perfect 

 flowers have a shorter corolla, otherwise similar to the pistillate flowers and with- 

 out staminodes. The fruit is a large juicy berry, with numerous rough seeds, 

 their endosperm fleshy. One species enters the extreme southern portion of our 

 area. 



PAPAYA 



GENUS CARICA LINN.^US 

 Species Caxica Papaya Linnaeus 



[|LSO called Custard apple, and Papaw, this peculiar plant is of short 

 duration, and its stem structure and lack of branches suggest a gigan- 

 tic herb. It is a common plant throughout tropical America and 

 occurs in our area in southern Florida, where improved varieties are 

 cultivated for their fruit. Its maximum height is about 6 meters, with a trunk 

 diameter of 1.5 dm. 



The trunk is slender, round, and naked, seldom branched. The bark is thin, 

 light green; it gradually passes into the woody tissue, which is ver}' soft and porous 

 and only about 2 cm. thick, enclosing a layer of pithy tissue which in turn en- 

 closes a large central cavity. The leaves, borne at the top of the trunk, are subor- 

 bicular in outline, 2 to 6 dm. broad, palmately 5- to 7-lobed, the segments again 

 pinnately lobed and pointed, light green above, pale and glaucous with prominent 

 yellowish venation beneath ; the leaf-stalk is yellow, stout, hollow, often 5 dm. long 



708 



