Page:Illustrations of Indian Botany, Vol. 2.djvu/78

34 a fleshy albumen : radicle slender, turned towards the hilum : cotyledons flat. ——Trees without branches. Leaves alternate, lobed, on long slender petiols."

AFFINITIES. Jussieu originally arranged Carica and the genera now referred to Passifloreae as allied genera, under Cucurbitaceae ; remarking, that they were principally distinguished by their superior ovary, he like others considering the Peponida as a 1 -celled parietal fruit, and thus placed them between Cucurbitaceae and Urticaceae. Their affinity with the former is still asserted but not with the hitter. In my remarks on Cucurbitaceae I have shown that in common with all other parietose orders they can have no very close affinity with that family on account of the wide difference in the structure of their ovary. With Passifloreae they are closely connected by one character, common to both, but not constant in all the species, the placentas, namely, being spread over the whole surface of the carpels in place of confined to their lines of junction. The seed, which I have not seen well described, may perhaps afford other characters. It is enclosed with a quantity of thin mucous pulp, in a hyaline sack, arillus ? is of an oval shape, the testa thick, exteriorly black and of a loose cork-like texture, rough and corrugated internally firmer, polished within. Sir W. J. Hooker describes it, as about the size of a hemp seed, " roundish, compressed, almost black, but covered with a transversely wrinkled, loose, greyish, skin or arillus, and enveloped in mucous." This description does not quadrate with specimens now before me — the testa of which evidently consists of 2 layers, an outer one spongy or suberose, furrowed, and an inner denser and polished within, enclosed within a loose transparent, sack but no proper arillus. The seed itself agrees in structure with those of both Euphorbeaceae and Urticaceae, as does those of Passifloreae, which however form only a remote affinity when not supported by characters taken from the ovary or mature fruit. I look upon Papay aceae as more nearly related to Passifloreae than to any other order, though sufficiently distinct.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. America is the native country of this order, which is only known in other countries as objects of cultivation, but as such, the Papaw has become widely distributed, apparently readily adopting itself to every variation of climate within the tropics.

PROPETIES AND USES. These are about the most curious of any yet met with in the vegetable kingdom, but so little known in India, that I am under the necessity of having recourse to the experience acquired in the West Indies to make them known. These accounts though rather too long for this work I shall not attempt to abridge, but introduce in the words of the originals. One circumstance 1 have observed, not mentioned by either, is, that the ripe seeds when chewed yield in a very marked degree the pungency and flavour of nasturtium or Indian cress. This flavour and taste is possessed by the seed proper, not the testa, which is insipid. The first of the following extracts is from the pen of Sir W. J. Hooker, published in the Botanical Magazine, Nos. 2898 99 — and the last from a paper by Dr. Holder, long a medical practitioner in the West Indies, published in the Wernerian Memoirs, vol. 3d page 245.

"The Papaw Tree is of rapid growth. ST. PIERRE probably spoke from his own knowledge, when he described VIRGINIA as having planted a seed, which, in three years' time, produced a trunk twenty feet high, with its upper part loaded with ripe fruit. It is for the sake of this fruit, mainly, that, the plant is cultivated ; but if the flavour were not better than that yielded by what ripened in our stove, I cannot recommend it as at all agreeable. Brown in his Natural History of Jamaica tells us, that " it has a pleasant sweetish taste, and is much liked by many people ; that, while young, it is commonly used for sauce ; and when boiled and mixed with lime juice and sugar, is not unlike, or much inferior to that made of real apples, for which it is commonly substituted." In the opinion of SLOANE it is not a very pleasant fruit, even when helped with pepper and sugar; and the more ordinary use, he adds, of this fruit. is before it is ripe, when, as large as one's fist, it is cut into slices, soaked in water till the milky juice is out, and then boiled and eaten as turnips, or baked as apples.

The juice of the pulp, according to DESCOURTILZ, in the Flore Medicale des Antilles, is used as a cosmetic, to remove freckles on the skin, caused by the sun ; and the negroes in the French colonies employ the leaves to wash their linen instead of soap.

As a medicinal plant, the Papaw Tree is particularly deserving of notice. HERMANDEZ long ago spoke of the milky juice of the unripe fruit as a powerful vermifuge ; which has been