Too early to tell gender of papayas?

[sparkletts05]

Hi everyone! My papaya trees have started putting out blooms for the first time, and I'm still a little unsure what gender some of them are exactly. I've got some pictures below:









Thanks!

[Tropicdude]

Well its not a male which is a good start.  kind of hard to tell though if its hermaphrodite or female, hermie would be best.

[Mike T]

The first one is leaning towards female from hermie but the other 2 are too young.

[greenman62]

sometimes you will get male flowers from a herm  tree also
it depends on the variety
papaya sex can be weird. I have a male tree with a couple of fruit on it.

[Tropicalgrower89]

^Male trees can produce fruit, but they tend to be not as good as the female fruits flavor-wise.

[sparkletts05]

Thanks for the responses, everyone! Unfortunately it seems one of the blooms fell off from the first picture. Any possible causes for this?

[Delvi83]

Do the same plant have both male and female flowers (not hermie) ?

[mushroombob]

Not usually, but there are times when hermie flowers will have non-functional anthers. So even though it's a hermie plant, it's functionally female

[greenman62]

its fairly normal for the first few flowers to fall off.
sometimes it is due to over-watering , or not enough sun also.

[TheWaterbug]

Hi everyone! My papaya trees have started putting out blooms for the first time, and I'm still a little unsure what gender some of them are exactly. I've got some pictures below:

Do you know what variety of papaya you have there?

I have two TR Hovey plants, and my year-old trees have buds that look just like yours. TR Hovey is allegedly self-fertile, though I'm not sure that reference is scholarly enough to cite.

[sparkletts05]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! I'm not sure what kind I have-it was some Hawaiian variety I bought at the supermarket, I believe. So another one of my trees has started putting out more discernible flowers. These look a little different from the ones I put up in the original post. The bud has a sort of base at the bottom now. Take a look:



Any idea what gender these may be?

[Geppo]

I would let them all grow because they all need each other for pollination/cross pollination. You may end up with different varieties of papaya. I started from seeds that i got from a supermarket papaya a few years ago and now i have about seven different varieties in my backyard. If only flowers come out of the new buds after a few months it may be a non bearing male but by then the other trees should have fruits.  Good luck and please lets see the progress of the fruits.

[greenman62]

it looks like a male flower, but, its very hard to tell now.
its not a male tree though.
male trees have clusters of flowers.

most new types of papaya are bred to have less males
and more females and hermi's
i have 24 papaya trees from seed, only 2 are male.

here is some info
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/F_N-5.pdf

[JeffDM]

I gave up trying to tell the difference when the plants were young so I just planted a bunch of papayas in pot and in the ground then waited.  They ones that didn't bear fruit still made attractive and decorative plants in the landscape.