Carica papaya

• Botanical Name : Carica papaya L.
• Common Name : Papaiyu, Papaw, Tree Melon
• Plant Family : Caricaceae

• Earlier this plant was placed in family Passifloraceae by Bentham and Hooker. But because it does not show many characteristics of Passifloraceae and hence Hutchinson placed it under Caricaceae.

• Plant Form : Tree
• Occurrence (Sectors) : 1, 5, 6, 8, 12-15, 17
• Occurrence (Special Areas) : Gujarat Forestry Research Foundation, Van Chetana Kendra, Infocity

About Carica papaya Plant :

• Habit : A small tree usually dioecious with milky juice.       
• Leaves : Spirally arranged, exstipulate, long-stalked, palmately divided usually 7-fid, lobes ovate, acute, variously lobed.
• Flowers :
  • Bisexual and unisexual.
  • The plants being monoecious or dioecious, the female inflorescences are one to three-flowered, while the terminal flowers are sometimes bisexual or pure female.
  • The flowers are pentamerous and regular.
  • Male flower-Calyx 5 lobed, small, petals 5, united into a slender tube, lobes contorted or valvate.
  • Stamens 10 in two whorls at different levels on the petals, anthers, erect, introrse.
  • Female flower-solitary axillay or in clusters.
  • Calyx as in male, petals at first connivent but finally free, no staminodes, ovary superior, sessile, one celled, unilocular, ovules many, anatropous, on parietal placentas, on 5-lines from the wall.
  • Style short, stigmas 5, lobed.
• Fruit : A big fleshy berry.
• Seeds : Many, black ovoid, endosperm and aril present.
• Flowering and Fruiting Time : Throughout year
• Significance :
  • Cultivated everywhere for its fruits.
  • The green fruit is used to make meat tender, it is also prickled.
  • It contains an active peptonizing ferment, called Papain, which is used in medicine and in dyspepsia.
  • The milky juice is employed to cure ringworm and the leaves are used to expel Guinea-worm and also applied on warts, and corns to be removed from the skin.
  • The ripe fruit is much used chiefly to cure digestive troubles.