The papaw (Anona triloba) of the Southern States is another member of this family, but the papaw of the tropics (Carica Papaya) is a dif ferent affair. It rises above the garden patches like a palm, but is really a sort of tall herba ceous plant, very slender, with a tuft of huge cut leaves at the top, beneath which hang dozens of canteloupe-like fruits that when cut dis close a hollow centre lined with small, black mucilaginous seeds. Its juice is said to render meat tender, it is the source of a drug and is itself prescribed for digestive troubles.
Avocados, or alligator pears (Persea gratis sima), were at one time called "Midshipman's butter," the smooth rich flesh having been spread on bread, but they are now more gen erally used as a salad—or dessert — fruit.
They grow on a rather large tree. The star apple (Chrysopkyllum Cainsto) is also a large tree which changes color continually as the wind turns up either the green upper-surfaces or the satiny brown under-surfaces of the foliage. °You are just as deceitful as a star apple* is a West Indian comment supplemented by an other, "he sticks like a star apple,* for this fruit, a little larger than an orange, smooth, purplish or green in color, hangs persistently on its long stem. When cut transversely, the severed tops of the seeds radiating from the centre form a star embedded in gelatinous flesh stained with color from the rind, from which gummy juices exude and cling to spoon and lips. The mammee apple (Mammea Ameri cana) and the Otaheite apple (Spondias dulcis) are also grown for their fruit. Passion-flowers yield fruit rather like that of the °Maypop* of our Southern States. One of them, the golden apple (Passiflora laurifolia), clambers over shade trees and drops its oval fruits on the ground. The contents are mucilaginous and seedy and are sucked out. Others are the gren adilla used in ices and the sweet-cup (P. quad rangularis, P. malifortsis).
It is said that a species of jujube was the °Lotus* of ancient history, but the small fruits of Jujube Zizyphus do not seem surpassingly tempting; they are generally dried and used as a refreshing acid dessert in winter, and formerly were an ingredient in "jujube paste.* A famous Mexican fruit is the ttufia,” produced by sev eral varieties of cactus, especially by Opuntia Ficus-Indica and O. Tuna. An Opuntia plant appears on the coat-of-arms of Mexico. It is also called prickly pear from its shape and armament, or Indian fig on•account of the many small seeds embedded in its somewhat acid pulp; it has been carried to the Mediterranean shores, thriving on their arid, hot sands and has become a veritable pest in Queensland. Some of the °tunas* are prickly, and an old traveler says that Spanish dons played a trick on new comers by rubbing several °tufias* in a napkin, thus fastening the infinitesimal spines in the fabric "wherewith a man wiping his mouth to drink, those little prickles stick in his lips so that they seem to sew them up together, and make him for a while falter in his speech.* The
cashew (Anacardium occidentale) has peculiar kidney-shaped fruits or nuts poised on the tips of swollen, pear-shaped, fleshy stalks that, al though astringent, are eaten as °cashew apples* and furnish a wine. The shelled nuts are usually roasted and eaten with salt, and are said to be better than almonds. The tropical almond (Terminalla Catappa), a handsome street tree, also bears edible almond-like nuts. Tamarinds are the fruit of a huge leguminous timber-tree (Tamarindus indica), which is cov ered by the buffy pods, fragile-shelled, very like ripe bean-pods, but filled with' a dark-brown acid pulp which is utilized for cooling drinks and also for tart preserves. There are also small fruits known as °plums* that are used for preserves, and the small, tough, puckery, pink-hearted yellow guava (Psidium guava) is famous for the sweet paste and jelly made from it.
Mangoes (Mangifera indica), however, ate among the most valuable of tropical fruit. Unripe they are preserved- and pickled arid when ripe are eaten from the hand. The mango is so important a food that Jamaican bakers do not expect to sell as much bread as usual when this fruit is ripe. There are many which are cultivated in the tropical belt and have become naturalized therein; the inferior sorts are fibrous and have a turpentiny taste, but the better kinds are softer and more luscious. At the best the mango requires skiU in manipulation; the tough fibres surrounding the husk of the seed radiating through the flesh. Golden loquats (Eriobotrya Japonica) and the fruits of many palms are among the minor fruits of tropical regions. Oily Sesame seeds (Sesamuno orientale) are cultivated for food and oil.
Although not eaten directly, the pencil shaped pods of an orchid (Vanilla officinalis) are cured for flavoring purposes, becoming the vanilla of commerce. They are the fruits of a cultivated vine which creeps up tree-trunks. Annatto, or achiote seeds, are also gathered from the little tree, Bixa orellana, for the sake of their arils, which yield an orange-red dye applied to dairy products, and formerly used as a skin paint by South American aborigines. The dried fruit of pimento (Pimento officsnalis) becomes the allspice of commerce, while the seed and arils of Myristica fragrans are known as nutmeg and mace. Consult Candolle Al phonse de, 'Origin of Cultivated Plants' New York 1902) ; Cook, O. F., and Collins, . N., 'Economic Plants of Porto Rico' (Contribution United States National Herbarium, Vol. VIII, pt. 2, Washington 1903) • Philippine Commis sion, 'Report' (Part 3, United States War De partment, Washington 1907).