Males Not Needed. Females Either.

Until this fall I haven't focused much on my papaya plants. The half dozen I planted in 2013 promptly departed for compost heaven in the standing water of that very wet summer. I tried again and now have a random assortment of them growing, mostly in not enough sunlight. They are making fruit, but are too small to carry it to maturity.

Now I'm working on a major upgrade to my papaya horticulture. Some of the details will appear upcoming posts, but today let's just review one of the oddities of this unusual fruiting plant--- the fact that papayas (basically) have three genders: male, female, and hermaphrodite (or, in Tropical Fruit Forum-ese, hermies).

Males are easily identified by their flowers, which as seen here are on relatively long peduncles (flower stems), as opposed to the other two genders whose short peduncles keep the flowers--- and later the fruit--- close to the main trunk.

Males go directly to the compost heap.

Females are a little trickier to identify. Their flowers have ovaries but not anthers. If you have one producing fruit that you like, it may be worth keeping, but generally speaking the females belong on the compost heap as well.

The keepers are the hermaphroditic plants. The flowers are “perfect”, meaning they have both ovaries and anthers. Hermies are self-pollinating, and can pollinate females as well as other hermies. The fruit of the females tends to be rounder and have a larger seed cavity. Some sources say the hermie's fruit is tastier. Even if not, the assured pollination, smaller fruit cavity and a shape conducive to tighter packing for shipping make hermies the nearly universal choice for commercial growers.

There are rules for the proportions of genders to be expected in seeds from the various pollination combinations of male-female, hermie-female, and hermie-hermie, but they won't be on the exam. More important for the home grower is being aware of various phenomena involving papaya gender and fruiting. Males can produce small, useless fruit. Females sometimes produce fruit without pollination--- I've had one, which had no seeds and was bland-tasting. Some papayas have both male and female flowers. Some hermies produce some male flowers. Sometimes--- especially after a traumatic event--- papaya plants will change genders.

In short, thin out the male and female plants, and be prepared for surprises.