Hanging papaya fruit tree identification help
Hello...I was reading some older posts to try to get more information on this strange papaya tree I have. The tree has fruits that are hanging from stems. From what I could piece together, I have a hermaphrodite tree, but in those cases, I was reading fruits still grow next to the trunk.
Wife is from Thailand so she has made garden more tropical. We have around 8 papaya trees. Seven trees have fruit directly attached to trunk near top of tree. But one tree is about 8 feet tall now. For the first 3 years, there was no fruit. People would tell us the tree was male because flowers were at the end of long stems/branches. But in the past two years, the tree has produced fruit. Wife's friends who had grown up in countryside/farms in thailand also had never seen a tree like this.
At the top of the tree, there are flowers right next to the tree trunk. Tree also had long stems with a bell shaped flower which turned into fruits. When the fruits were smaller and lighter in weight, the tree was like an open umbrella. As the fruits got heavier, the stems would start bending so now all fruits are hanging next to the trunk. Another interesting thing is some of the stems would have multiple fruits on them.
If anyone has a similar tree or any idea why these fruit grow from stems, it'd be appreciated.
Comments (12)
11 years agoHere is a closeup...you can see two stems have multiple fruits growing on them.
At the peak, there were 40+ fruits on this tree....wife had pruned some stems that had more than 2 fruits on them.
I"m guessing that the heavier ones are in the 2 to 4 lb range....not sure when they will ripen.
- 11 years ago
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Comments (2)Thanks for the post on that tree. I had suspected it was either black cherry or chokecherry. Hoping for the latter as i would love to have chokecherry jelly. My favorite. Haven't had any luck finding any around this area. Thanks again. Sue...See MoreMale Papaya tree tenacles bear fruit!! WEIRD!
Comments (7)The weirdest part is this papaya tree is a "chance" seedling in my front landscape bed likely courtesy of a passing bird. I was going to cut it down when I first noticed it. Then a week or two after that my wife was helping in the yard and managed to weedwack my 3 foot tall pink lady papaya off right at the base. Since I lost the Pink Lady plant I just left this chance Papaya growing. Last year, I saw that it was a male and thought about giving it the old chop but it had kind of grown on me. I was thinking about taking it down once again just a few weeks ago but never got around to doing it. After all that I'm just hoping this papaya tastes good. Who knows maybe its a new type, hows "Chance" or "Mystery" sound as a name? Harry - I'll make sure you get some to try. Tony...See MoreFruit / Nut tree identification help
Comments (5)i had a purple plum ... that flowered for 15 years ... and did not set fruit.. until the season it died ... nothing to do with lack of pollinators ... it was an ornamental, rather than fruit tree ... and frankly.. i dont know what to make about that graft job in the second pic ... i spent the first 6 years in my new house.. harboring everything the prior owners left... you know.. for the history ... bahhh on that.. the happiest day in that garden was when i finally got rid of the last nightmare the prior owners planted .. lol ... if you want a fruit tree... plant some fruit trees .. talk to the fruit nuts in that forum ... and if you want a good landscape tree or shrub ... but dont spend too much energy.. trying to rescue this overly mature.. horribly grafted plant ... [btw ... the 'good' plant may have died long ago ... this might be a reversion of the rootstock] ken...See MoreFruit tree identification
Comments (3)With that size, my guess is pomelo or pummelo. There are a few different spellings but same fruit....See MoreRelated Professionals
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- 4 years agolast modified: 4 years ago
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10 months agolast modified: 10 months agoI'm sorry to necropost but there is very little out there on this subject. This came up on a Google search and it's 10 years old! I'm not a papaya expert, I just moved into a place with a male papaya plant out back. When I moved in a didn't even know papayas had different sexes! A lady I know (I call her The Mango Lady) said to drive 2 small stakes in the trunk low at 90 degree angles to make the tree a female. I drove in 2 metal skewers at 90 degree angles and after a few weeks the flowers changed. Then some produced fruit at the end of the branches and that's what you see in the pics. I'm pretty sure the tree is a hermaphrodite now. I have no clue what to expect but it's fun to watch
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