XLIV. CARICACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with bitter milky juice, and alternate long-petiolate persistent simple or digitately compound leaves, without stipules. Flowers unisexual or perfect, the perianth of the male and female flowers dissimilar; stamens in two series, inserted on the corolla; filaments free; anthers introrse. Fruit baccate.
The Pawpaw family with two genera is tropical American and Mexican, a single representative of the family reaching the shores of southern Florida.