THE PAPAYA AND ITS RELATIVES 



227 



The trunk bears no lateral branches, but sometimes divides to 

 form several erect stems, which produce at their tops large 

 deeply-lobed leaves sometimes 2 feet across, upon hollow 

 petioles 2 feet or more in length. The wood is fleshy, the bark 

 smooth, grayish brown, marked by conspicuous leaf-scars. 



The papaya is normally dioecious (Fig. 29) and produces its 

 flowers in the uppermost leaf- 

 axils, the staminate blossoms 

 sessile on pendent racemes 3 feet 

 or more in length, the pistillate 

 ones subsessile and usually soli- 

 tary or in few-flowered corymbs. 

 The staminate flowers are fun- 

 nel-shaped, about an inch long, 

 whitish, the corolla five-lobed, 

 with ten stamens in the throat ; 

 the pistillate flowers are consid- 

 erably larger, with five fleshy 

 petals connate toward the base, 

 a large, cylindrical or globose, 

 superior ovary, and five sessile 

 fan-shaped stigmas. 



The fruit is commonly spheri- 

 cal or cylindrical in form, round 

 or obscurely five-angled in trans- 

 verse section, from 3 up to 20 

 or more inches in length, and 

 sometimes weighing as much 

 as 20 pounds. In general character it strongly resembles 

 a melon; the skin is thin, smooth on the exterior, orange- 

 yellow to deep orange in color; the flesh, which is deep 

 yellow to salmon-colored, being from 1 to 2 inches thick 

 and inclosing a large, sometimes five-angled, cavity, to the 

 walls of which are attached the numerous round, wrinkled, 



FIG. 29. Flowers of the papaya : 

 the cluster and the single flower to 

 its left are staminate (male), and the 

 larger flower to the right is pistillate 

 (female). Sometimes the organs of 

 both sexes are found in the same 

 flower, but this condition cannot be 

 considered normal. (X about |) 



