Papaya, Carica papaya?

Looks like papayas to me as well. They come up all over my yard from fallen fruits and compost.

Carol, do you ever let them grow? Do you think they might produce fruit?

>"flowers so I can tell the males from the females" ___ Very helpful. Am I correct in thinking that pedicel length is the only characteristic that I would need to observe?

>"long time for those first fruits to ripen." ___ "First" ever, or "first" of every season?

All of them really - legend has it it takes 9 months, like human gestation. Not sure that's true, but it sure seems like it.

As the flowers start to develop, you can observe whether they're forming a single bloom or a branch with many blooms. Multiple blooms on a female or hermaphroditic plant will have only a few flowers forming, and they're noticeably larger than the male flowers, with an embryonic fruit inside.

I have hermaphroditic plants, so I cull all the males.

Three tall plants, first-time flowering this year. Have been flowering for a long time; no flower branches = no male flowers. So, the small fruits that are growing on one tree are evidence that pollen came from someone else's yard, right?

Some papayas are hermaphroditic. I shared a link to info about papayas a few posts up.

Structure is not inherent in the term, nor does the superficial treatment of it in linked article speak to structure.