So, I have two papayuela trees. One is about a meter and a half tall and is constantly covered in male flowers. The other is under a meter tall and had nearly died during an "indoor heat wave" that caused me a lot of devastation a while back. It's now recovered and is just starting getting ready to flower for the first time. Unfortunately, the buds look just like the buds on the other one, and thus I assume that it's also a male.
I know that Vasconcelleas are in general "mostly monoecious". Sometimes there's two sex plants, sometimes you can get a sex reversal (such as from trauma or certain chemicals), etc, but usually they're either one sex or the other. In the cases of sex reversal I've read differenting reports about the quality of the fruit and don't know that even if I could induce it whether the resultant seeds would be viable.
I also have a lot of new seeds of vasconcellia monoica. While none have sprouted yet, they seem to be in good shape - one or two molded right away while the others have shown no signs despite being in the same environment, providing encouragement that those couple were dead while the others are quite alive and doing fine. So a few questions.
1) If I ended up with females of V. monoica, could V. pubescens act as a pollinator?
2) Could one backbreed V. pubescens hybrids?
3) Don't vasconcelleas generally have short lifespans? So is it even likely that my males will be around and healthy after the next generation or two of Vasconcellea seedlings?
4) What would you recommend? My growing space is of course limited. Should I try to induce female flowers via trauma (such as removing of growing tips), or simply hope that one turns out to produce both sex flowers on its own? Should I try to import chemicals to induce female flowers? Should I try to import more V. pubescens seeds, hope they make it and germinate, then wait a few more years and hope there's females in the mix? Or just simply move the V. pubescens into a poorer position in my grow room the next time I rearrange and free up their space for more plants that have a chance of fruiting?
