hi sir . I want to know how will know that papaya male & female tree? I want to make papaya garden if possible then please sir/ madam kindly help me .

Hi Sanjib Baro.
Welcome to NGA, glad you found your way here.

Here is a link to an interesting discussion on this topic.
The thread "Will this papaya tree bear fruit?" in Tropicals forum

You can't tell what you have until they bloom. Male papaya plants have panicles (long stems) with many small fragrant flowers on them. Female papayas have larger single flowers close to the stem of the plant. If you have male and female plants in your garden they will pollinate but you will get fruit only from the female plants.

But sometimes they have both kinds of flowers or "complete" flowers that will self-pollinate and then you don't need both kinds. In places where they grow papayas commercially, they remove any that are not "complete" also known as hermaphrodites and only keep the self-pollinating plants because then you will get fruit from every plant.

If you start your papayas from the seeds of one that was commercially grown, the chances are pretty good you will get some self-pollinating plants.

Great information Elaine.

dyzzypyxxy said:You can't tell what you have until they bloom. Male papaya plants have panicles (long stems) with many small fragrant flowers on them. Female papayas have larger single flowers close to the stem of the plant. If you have male and female plants in your garden they will pollinate but you will get fruit only from the female plants.

But sometimes they have both kinds of flowers or "complete" flowers that will self-pollinate and then you don't need both kinds. In places where they grow papayas commercially, they remove any that are not "complete" also known as hermaphrodites and only keep the self-pollinating plants because then you will get fruit from every plant.

If you start your papayas from the seeds of one that was commercially grown, the chances are pretty good you will get some self-pollinating plants.

Looking at the plants' flowers, how does one tell the difference between hermaphrodite and complete?

Kadie, I had to remove my papaya last winter as it got too tall and fell over. So I don't have a picture to show you. But the simple answer is to look for both stamens and pistils. The flowers are pretty big, so it's fairly obvious if you have a complete flower. The stamens are the long, filament like things coming from the center of the flower and the pistil is the part with the ovary that will receive pollen.

There are some great photos in our database.
Female blooms on trunk of tree

Papaya (Carica papaya)

Male blooms suspended on long stalks


Entry showing more photos.
Papaya (Carica papaya)

Thank you guys. I asked about hermaphrodites because I had never heard the term used for papayas...now I understand.

Hermaphrodites have the "complete" flowers...they self-pollinate. Female papaya plants need pollen from a male or hermaphrodite flower to have fruit. This site shows the differences via pictures:
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc...

We have been growing papaya trees for many years, and whenever a male should show up we cut it down since these do not produce fruit. And because we grow several trees at a time the chances of getting hermaphrodites is good. (Learned something new.)

Two years ago we planted 10 seedlings (Red Lady) we bought from Dept. of Agriculture. Nine were planted in close proximity of each other...the 10th was planted nearly 200 feet away. When they started blooming only the 9 planted together produced fruit, the 10th one didn't produce fruit until we hand-pollinated from flowers of the former. Obviously the 10th was a female.

We have several young papaya trees that are starting to produce fruit. The largest one I am fairly certain is a hermaphrodite...there are clusters of small flowers in the axils of the leaves. Come daylight (couple of hours from now), I'll take and post pictures of the flowers and fruits.

Here's a picture of one of my papaya trees with fruits.


See what I mean about the small flowers in large clusters...looks like hermaphrodite. If it was a female it would have one or two very large blooms per leaf axil.

Male papaya plant with fruits that is no good to eat


2nd pic is a male papaya plant that grows tall wthout any fruit