FOOD IN THE TROPICS 
95 
tion and if rubbed onto a piece of tough meat it has the property 
of making it tender. If this milky juice oozes from the rind 
when it is cut the fruit is not ripe enough to eat. The juice 
should not be allowed to remain on the skin, because it will 
set up an irritation. Green fruit may be placed in the sun where 
it will ripen in a very short time. Do not attempt to climb 
a papaya as the wood in it is so brittle that it is liable to snap 
under a man’s weight. The trunk can be severed by a single 
blow from a machete. You should be careful not to get any of 
the milky sap, either from the stem or the rind of the fruit, into 
your eyes as it will cause intense pain and temporary, sometimes 
even permanent, blindness. The flower, leaf steams, and young 
leaves may be eaten cooked as greens provided you cook them 
in several changes of water to remove the bitter taste and harm- 
ful substance from the sap. 
Mango trees are often found in abandoned clearings and 
around deserted village sites in the East Indies and southern 
Asia. The delicious fruit that they bear is somewhat larger 
than a baseball. It is elliptic or round and somewhat flattened 
in shape (Fig. 22). The leathery rind, yellow or greenish in 
color and somewhat spotted, encloses the edible pulp that clings 
closely around a i single, large, and flattened seed. The fruits 
ripen from early summer through early autumn. 
A common tree found on abandoned plantations in South 
America, as well as in the Pacific area, is the cashew (Fig. 23), 
the nuts of which are popular in the United States. The 
nuts are not edible until boiled or roasted, and all of the oil 
must be heated out of them before they are eaten. When 
boiling or roasting, avoid the steam or smoke as it is very 
caustic. The greatly swollen base, reddish or yellowish in 
