A papaya trunk ringed with leaf scars is crowned by a great, deeply lobed leaf. A pink bud and small white flowers grow straight from the trunk, and half a fruit, cut open, shows yellow flesh packed with round black seeds. A pale striped caterpillar and a pupa rest on the top leaf, a hairy black-and-white caterpillar and a dark red pupa cling to the trunk, a gray moth sits on the fruit, and a pale butterfly with yellow-brown borders flies at upper left. Maria Sibylla Merian drew the plant for plate 40 of Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705), engraved by P.

Sluyter. She explained that papaya trees are either male, bearing only flowers, or female, like this one, whose small white flowers grow from the trunk and give the fruit. The ripe fruit is yellow, full of black seeds, and melts in the mouth. She found white caterpillars at the top of these trees, and because the hollow trunk could not be climbed, she had a tree cut down to get them.

They pupated on June 10, 1700, and the moths came out on July 3. It is in the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, DC.