(named in honor of Cardinal Casimiro Gomez de Ortega, Spanish botanist of the eighteenth century). Rutaceae. Evergreen trees, one of which is grown for the edible fruits.

Leaves alternate, long-petioled, digitate, 3-7-folio-late; leaflets petiolulate, lanceolate, entire or slightly serrate, smooth or pubescent beneath: flowers regular, polygamo-dicecious; calyx 5-parted, small; petals 5, oblong, valvate, apex incurved; disk inconspicuous, circular; stamens 5, free; filaments subulate; anthers cordate; ovary sessile, on disk, globose, 5- or occasionally 6-8-lobed, 5-celled; stigma sessile, 5-lobed; ovules solitary in the cells, axillary: fruit a drupe, large, depressed-globose; pulp agreeable to taste, edible; seeds oblong, compressed, exalbuminose. - Four species in Mex. and S.

Edulis

Llav. & Lex. White Sapote. Cochil Sapota. Large tree: trunk ashen gray, with warty excrescences: leaves dark green, glossy: flowers greenish yellow, small: fruit greenish yellow when ripe, with strong, thick epicarp, 1/2in. thick, about the size of an orange; seeds nearly 1 in. long and half as wide. Mex. - The fruit of this species has a delicious flavor, similar to that of a peach. It is used in Mex. as an aid in inducing sleep, and the leaves as a remedy for diarrhea. It grows on the coast of Mex. to an altitude of about 7,000 ft. See Sapote, White. H. J. Webber.