COMMON MELON OR PAPAW TREE. 
47 
leaves are alternate and large, digitate or palmately lobed, on long petioles; 
the male flowers in axillary racemes with clustered flowers ; the female 
flowers usually solitary. 
COMMON MELON or PAPAW TREE. 
PAPAYA vulgaris, foliis palmatis 7-9 -lobis sinuatis, laciniis oblongis 
acutis , jioribus masculis racemoso-corymbosis. 
Papaya vulgaris. Decand. in Lamarck’s Diet. vol. 5, p. 2. Illust. t. 
821. 
Carica Papaya. Linn. Sp. pi. Willd. Sp. pi. 4, p. 814. 
Carica fronde comosa , foliis peltatis ; lobis varie sinuatis. Brown, Jam. 
p. 360. 
Papaya fructu melo-peponis effigie. Plum. Catal. p. 20. Trew. Ehret. 
tab. 7 1 Tourn. Instit. p. 659. 
Papaya maram. Rheed, Malab. vol. 1 , t. 15, fig. 1 , [male], Amhapaya, 
fig. 2, [female]. 
Arbor melonifera. Boutius, p. 96. 
Arbor platani folio , fructu Peponis magnitudine eduli . Bauhin Pinax, 
p. 131. Merian. Surinam, p. 40, tab. 40 and 62. 64. 
The Papaw Tree, rising erect into the air without 
branches to the height of 20 feet, in its mode of growth 
may be compared to the Palms, or to the tall and herba- 
ceous Banana, while its true relations are to the Gourd and 
Passion flower tribes. The elegant palmated leaves spread 
out only towards the summit of the stem, and form a wide 
circle like an airy umbrella. The stem is cylindric, about 
a foot in diameter, with the wood of a soft and spongy 
consistence, and so fibrous as to afford a material for cord- 
age like hemp. In six months it attains the height of a 
man, and soon after begins to flower, attaining its utmost 
magnitude in 3 years. 
The root is perpendicular, whitish, spongy, and of a dis- 
agreeable taste and smell. The stem is marked nearly its 
whole length, with the scars of the fallen leaves, and is of 
