{"id":57380,"date":"2018-10-02T16:23:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T20:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/?p=57380"},"modified":"2018-10-03T12:29:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T16:29:40","slug":"whats-in-a-plant-name-papaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/2018\/10\/around-the-garden\/whats-in-a-plant-name-papaya\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Plant Name? \u2013 Papaya"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katherine Wagner-Reiss has her certificate in botany from NYBG and has been a tour guide there for three years.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"Papaya\"<\/a>Georgia O\u2019Keeffe: Visions of Hawai\u2018i features a painting titled Papaya Tree, \u2018IAO Valley, Maui.<\/em> Historically, this is a particularly interesting painting because O\u2019Keeffe submitted it to The Hawaiian Pineapple Company (later Dole) for use in their advertisements, but it was rejected because a major competitor of theirs sold papayas! It is the only painting of a tree form in the exhibition, but botanically speaking, papayas are not trees because they lack a woody trunk; they are large herbaceous perennials. Nearly all of the plant species in O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s Hawaiian paintings can be found growing in the Haupt Conservatory. You will find the live papaya by the hale<\/em>, a typical Hawaiian structure used for social gatherings.<\/p>\n

Another interesting aspect of the Conservatory display is that the plants are divided into those native to Hawai\u2018i, those brought to Hawai\u2018i by the Polynesians about 1500 years ago (known as canoe plants), and those introduced after Captain Cook’s landing in 1778 (post-contact plants). Carica papaya<\/em> is a post-contact plant, native to Central and South America, and introduced to Hawai\u2018i soon after Captain Cook\u2019s landing, as a dioecious plant with male and female specimens. In 1911 a gynodioecious<\/a> solo papaya, better for commercial use, was introduced from the Caribbean. Papayas are now naturalized in Hawai\u2018i.<\/p>\n

O’Keeffe initially labeled this painting as a papaw. Of course, common names can be confusing because, while some people call papaya \u201cpawpaw,\u201d most people are thinking of the fruit of Asimina triloba<\/em>\u2014a large shrub also known as the pawpaw.<\/p>\n

Carica<\/em> is derived from the Greek for a kind of fig, because of the fig-like leaves. The specific epithet \u201cpapaya<\/em>\u201d was possibly derived from the Caribbean word for this fruit. The family is Caricaceae.<\/p>\n

If you want to see a papaya after the Georgia O’Keeffe show departs on October 28, Carica papaya<\/em> \u2018Thai Red\u2019 can be found growing in the lowland rain forest house of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly all of the plant species in O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s Hawaiian paintings can be found growing in the Haupt Conservatory. You will find the live papaya by the hale, a typical Hawaiian structure used for social gatherings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[952],"tags":[5523,5575,5223,5576],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph0lU-eVu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57380"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57388,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57380\/revisions\/57388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}