Papaya looks like a tree but is really a giant herb
A papaya plant can reach 10 metres, with a scarred trunk and a crown of huge lobed leaves, yet botanists class it as a large herbaceous plant rather than a tree. It usually grows as one unbranched stem, and every part of it runs with latex.
Carica papaya is one of three accepted species in its genus. It was domesticated in Mesoamerica, in what is now southern Mexico and Central America, and the word itself comes from Arawakan languages of the West Indies, entering English around 1600. Names get confusing from there. Australians may say pawpaw, and some use pawpaw and papaya for different cultivars: larger yellow-fleshed fruit versus longer fruit with orange-red flesh. In the United States, pawpaw means an entirely unrelated plant, Asimina triloba.
Leaves spiral around the top of the stem and can span 70 centimetres, each deeply cut into seven lobes. Plants are usually male or female. Their sweet-smelling flowers open at night and are pollinated by wind or insects. The fruit is a big berry up to 45 centimetres long, ready when it turns amber to orange and feels at least as soft as a ripe avocado, with many black seeds lining a hollow centre. Yellow skin owes its colour to lutein and beta-carotene, while red flesh is dominated by lycopene. Unripe fruit holds papain, an enzyme used to tenderise meat.
In the wild, papaya is an opportunist of disturbed forest. In southern Mexican rainforest it springs up quickly in gaps in the canopy and dies back once the canopy closes. In Florida's Everglades it becomes abundant on tree islands after major hurricanes. It is even counted as native to southern Florida, having been introduced there no later than AD 300 by predecessors of the Calusa people. Spaniards carried it to the Old World in the 16th century, and today it grows almost throughout the tropics.
India led world production in 2024 with 36 percent of the total. Growers battle viruses: papaya ringspot virus leaves dark green rings on fruit and spoils taste, and as of 2010 genetic modification was the only known protection.
Source: Papaya
