PAPAYA (Carica Papaya)
The papaya is a herb and not a tree. It is a
fast growing plant with a brief but very prolific productive span. A single
plant can produce between 30 and 150 fruits at its prime. The name is of
Spanish origin and it was the Spaniards and Portuguese who introduced the plant
to other tropical regions soon after their American conquests. A lot of you are
probably familiar with papaya as a fruit to be eaten raw but the unripe papaya
is often served as a vegetable and appear in a variety of dishes including the famous Thai papaya salad which is made out of long shredded strips of green papaya. In the unripe
form, it is also boiled and mashed and fed to babies in India, as the enzyme papain
in it is a good digestive aid. A traditional Chinese remedy to increase the
flow of milk in lactating mothers was a concoction made by boiling together a
half ripe papaya with pigs trotters. The enzyme papain, a milky latex in unripe
papaya can split protein, act as a beer clarifier and tenderize meat. That is
also the reason why in the olden days, your grandmother often use the leaf of a
papaya tree to wash the pig intestines before cooking them. Papain has numerous
modern applications including its use in the preparation of chewing gum, and is
an agent for preventing woolens from shrinking.
Do you know... what is the female of the Papaya tree called ?
(For answer, please write to Luv@Adventure)
Do you know... what is the female of the Papaya tree called ?
(For answer, please write to Luv@Adventure)