Volunteer papaya has a fruit on it!

[imafan26]

It looks like a female flower. If you open up the blossom and look at the immature fruit and it is slender it is a hermaphrodite. The female fruit is larger and has lobes.

I don't know why the fruit would be darker unless it is a varietal thing.

The small leaves on the trunk are common. Most of the time they stay small and most people would pick them off. Some of them may grow and make arms on the papaya, but you do not want too many arms to grow since it reduces fruit size.

When the papaya gets too tall to reach the fruit. Cut the trunk put a can over the top and allow one or two arms to grow. You will have smaller, but pickable fruit for a little while longer.

Papaya can get up to 30 ft tall and live about 8 years unless it gets PRSV. If the seed came from Dole plantation or Helemano then it is likely to be resistant as over 90% of the papaya grown commercially is resistant to papaya ringspot virus. It is either a rainbow or progeny of rainbow. In other words it will have the GMO gene for PRSV resistance.

[Rose bloom]

I think it is the Hawaiian papaya.

[Rose bloom]

One of the fruits has a small streak of yellow now I'll post a picture later.

[ReptileAddiction]

If you buy a papaya tree from a nursery they will all be hermaphrodite flowers correct? The ones I sell come in from wholesale with 3 trees growing tied together. Do you recommend cutting some down? How long would it be for a tree that is about a foot and a half tall in a 2 gallon container to bear fruit?

I would like to point out that papayas do not get 30' in California. They stay much smaller here.

[ReptileAddiction]

I would also like to point out that if you grew a papaya from seed then chances are it is GMO because most of the Hawaiian crop is genetically modified. In fact, it must be tested every time to certify it non GMO.

[Rose bloom]

I'm guessing mine is a hermaphrodite, because no one in my neighborhood has a papaya tree. However, the fruit had no seeds.

[imafan26]

I know this answer is late but in case you are still wondering. The inside of a papaya tree is hollow. That is why it is not smart to put a ladder up against the tree to pick the fruit, although lots of people do that. Papaya is really an herb, it is not woody. It will usually live about 8 years and can get up to thirty feet, way past good picking height. You can lop off the top and put a coffee can over the top and let a couple of the side branches grow. Don't let more than two grow or the fruit will be too small. Then, the fruit will be pickable again but will be smaller in size.

As to the color of the green fruit, some a light green, some are darker, it just depends on the tree.

The photo looks like a hermaphrodite. Hermaphrodite flowers are cylindrical. Female flowers are conical. Or in other words female flowers are fatter. It is easier to tell by the shape of the fruit. Large round fruit are usually female and pear shaped fruit are smaller and usually hermaphrodites. If you have a pure female, and no male or hermaphrodite tree nearby, the fruit will fall off due to lack of pollination.

[Rose bloom]

Female or hermaphrodite?

[Rose bloom]

Imafan...........

[sueannefl]

I love my red lady papaya trees they have rewarded me with may fruits to share with friends and family. My new papaya only 8 months is loaded with fruits that are getting ripe.

[imafan26]

Sorry for the late reply Rose, it looks like a female flower. You can tell by the presence of the baby fruit.
90% of the commercial papaya crop is GMO. There are non-GMO papaya around. GMO papaya are required to be sold in separate bins from non-GMO papaya. They do not label them GMO, they label them by variety. You have to know the GMO varieties. It is amazing how so many people are afraid of GMO, but are really uninformed about it.

So, often I hear that people don't like GMO, they only eat Rainbow. Rainbow is the second GMO papaya that was developed by crossing the first GMO SunUp to Kapoho to get a yellow fleshed fruit. Some people don't like strawberry papaya. If a box of GMO papaya are sitting beside non-GMO it is hard to tell the difference unles the non-GMO papaya has spots.

[Rose bloom]

Ok, thanks. It drives me nuts to see like 3 baby fruits on the tree, and they all fall off in the the next month or two. I kind of figured....

[imafan26]

The other clue was that your papaya had no seed. Femals fruit that are under pollinated do that. Hermaphrodites self pollinate so they usually have a lot of seeds. That is why it is recommended to plant 3 papaya of the hermaphrodite variety and 5 of the gmo Rainbow. The ratio of hermaphrodites is 1:3 , in other words there is one chance in 3 of getting a hermaphrodite. However, with Waimanalo X77 I get 90% hermaphrodite so I just plant one tree. Besides my neighbor is likely to have a tree anyway so if I have a female, it can still be pollinated by the neighbor's tree. If it is a male, it is history.

[Rose bloom]

The original volunteer died. It grew next to a wall and the garbage cans, but when it grew taller, the wind really took a toll on it and the top started dying. There is another one and I believe it is a hermaphrodite, because there are about 15-20 fruits on a 6 foot tall tree! I harvested about 3 green ones and made green papaya soup a few days ago; it was delicious! I'm going to let the rest ripen. One already has streaks of orange at the tip.

[applestar]

Oooh so envious !

[Rose bloom]

There is a huge one, easily more than half a foot.

[imafan26]

We have some very large papaya. They are called watermelon papaya and can grow larger than a football. Usually the really big ones are on trees that don't have a lot of crowded fruit. Very large fruit are usually female and if underpolinated they won't have a lot of seeds. My dad had one one time that had 2 seeds.

Most fruit from female trees will fall if not polinated but on occasion a female tree will be able to get mature fruit but the clue would be the lack of seeds.

You cannot tell if your tree is male, female or hermaphrodite until it is 5 months old and has started to flower. Ignore the first flowers because there will be a lot of males and few females. (no fruit in the flower). It is natural, but does not necessarily mean you have a male tree. Hermaphrodites will produce male flowers first.

Sunrise and X77 (Waimanalo low bearing) are non-GMO cultivars. They are solo type papaya. Rainbow is GMO and is widely sold in most markets here and on the mainland. It is a sweet yellow fleshed fruit that is resistant to papaya ringspot virus.

Sometimes I can get these to grow at my house but they don't survive at the community garden. There is an easy test available now to test for GMO contamination. The leaf is tested for the gene. There are people who still don't want to eat GMO fruit by choice and others by sheer ignorance. Most papaya grown in backyards here are from saved seeds or seeds from unknown varieties. Most people don't care about the pedigree if it tastes good. The one bad things about the purists are that if you want a pure variety, you will have to isolate and rogue out any trees the birds bring. GMO papaya will cross with any other papaya and papaya are polinated by insects so it is not uncommon for someone to unknowingly be growing a GMO papaya. My friend, touted the fact that his non-GMO (unknown) papaya was growing next to his neighbor's obviously infested plant and remained healthy. I think if he tested that tree, odds are his papaya had the PRSV resistant gene.

I grow mostly GMO papaya because there are squash all around me. Papaya ringspot virus is thought to be a mutated version of a squash virus that jumped hosts. Squash may be asymptomatic hosts of PRSV. My neighbor does not cut down his infested tree so the only ones that will survive have to have GMO genes. GMO papaya have been around since 1998 and are perfectly safe to eat. I prefer Malaysian papaya but they are not ringspot resistant. I had 5 trees at one time and my mother came and raided them regularly even though she had her own trees. I tried to plant more but because of the neighbor's infested tree they all got the virus early and I had to cut them down.

The GMO modification was the insertion of a gene that coats the virus and prevents it from causing the disease.
Papaya ringspot virus is a problem worldwide and other countries are also looking at GMO techniques to save their livelihoods. GMO techniques were developed to make life easier for people not to harm them.
http://www.agbioforum.org/v7n12/v7n12a07-gonsalves.htm
https://www.biofortified.org/2014/03/gm ... ut-people/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2409016/
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/F_N-5.pdf

[Rose bloom]

I'm pretty sure it's a female, because all the papaya have no seeds, but it's still producing and our neighbor's papaya plant (a few houses down) died a few months ago. So I don't know..it's weird.

[imafan26]

Occasionally a female papaya will set and hold on to fruit. They are usually round and large and have few to no seeds.

Besides chicken papaya soup, try to make Thai green papaya salad. it is very nice, the only thing about it is that once the dressing gets put on it has to be eaten right aways since it will get soggy fast.
http://www.thaitable.com/thai/recipe/green-papaya-salad

[Seananers]

Well looks like somebody knows how to make fruit

[Rose bloom]

Yeah, but imafan, the tree is continuously fruiting; as I look out the window now, I can see MORE flowers. Crazy tree. In winter, it's still fruiting at a ridiculous rate. If you take a green papaya, you can make a sort of tong sui soup with it. White fungus, lotus seed, dried jujubes (homegrown), water, and some sugar added make a lovely dessert. You can also cook it savory, like winter melon. I'm so hungry now...

[Seananers]

:D Yeah, but imafan, the tree is continuously fruiting; as I look out the window now, I can see MORE flowers. Crazy tree. In winter, it's still fruiting at a ridiculous rate. If you take a green papaya, you can make a sort of tong sui soup with it. White fungus, lotus seed, dried jujubes (homegrown), water, and some sugar added make a lovely dessert. You can also cook it savory, like winter melon. I'm so hungry now...

Now I want papaya ice cream. THANKS ALOT

[applestar]

Had too look up White fungus -- apparently also known as Snow fungus. I wonder if H-mart would have it or would I need to go to a more Chinese or SE Asian grocery store?

...photos on internet of white/snow fungus with wolf and goji berries dessert. I'd love to see yours.

[applestar]

Haha I HAD to find out more --

Tremella fuciformis, the snow fungus Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month for January 2006
http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/jan2006.html


Since it was found growing on wood in nature, it was assumed that this fungus was using the wood for its nutrition. However, for many centuries Tremella eluded cultivation. So why can't it be cultivated on wood, like shiitake, Oyster mushrooms, the pom pon mushroom, or enoki? In the absence of wood, this species tends to grow as a yeast, adding another problem for potential cultivators, who threw out the subcultures as contaminants, thinking they had one of several hundred species of yeasts, ...

The process is relatively easy once you know the ecology of the growth....

I also found out it's also known as Shiro Kikurage in Japanese (and the kanji/Chinese? 雪耳 -- going off-topic but "kikurage" is the black or tan wavy fungus often found in Chinese (and Japanese) food, and in Japanese means "Tree Jellyfish" -- written in kanji as 木耳. First character is "tree" but the 2nd character is "ear". Above, 雪耳 characters are "snow" and "ear" ). ---maybe I'm the only one who found all these intriguing...

Found this on instagram labeled as purchased at Hmart, so I'll look for it next time I'm there. Maybe they keep them in the front herbal medicinals cases with gingseng, etc.

[imafan26]

Papaya will continue to fruit once it starts until it dies or is cut down. Papaya "trees" are really giant herbs. They have fibruos stems that are not woody. The core of the papaya tree is hollow. Usually when it grows old the bottom of the tree starts to rot. Most people will cut the tree once they can no longer pick the fruit. If you top it and put a coffee can over the top of the stem to keep water out, the papaya will grow arms but only keep one or two or the fruit size will get very small. It will allow for pickable fruit a little longer and give you time to raise another one. It is recommended to plant 3 to 5 trees to try to get at least one that is a hermaphrodite. They can be planted all together and culled or planted 10 ft apart and then you keep the good ones.
If yours is a pure female and your neighbor's tree is gone, you might find more of your fruit dropping from not enough pollination unless there is another tree nearby.

Your soup sounds good.
Green papaya can be used to make Thai Green papaya salad and we use the green papaya to make chicken and papaya soup. Papaya can usually be substituted for squash or gourds in soup. Half ripe papaya can be shredded and pickled with a little chili pepper to give it some heat. Green papaya is also used sometimes as a meat tenderizer since it breaks down protein. You would just lay thin slices of papay on top of the meat for about an hour. You have to remember not to leave it on too long or it changes the texture of the meat too much. Papaya are added to tropical fruit salad along with coconut and pineapple. A popular way to eat it is with the center filled with cottage cheese. It can be used to make jam, smoothies or popsicles. It can also be made into a desert.
http://www.thekitchn.com/chilean-spring ... ime-168864

[Rose bloom]

Haha I HAD to find out more --

Tremella fuciformis, the snow fungus Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month for January 2006
http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/jan2006.html


Since it was found growing on wood in nature, it was assumed that this fungus was using the wood for its nutrition. However, for many centuries Tremella eluded cultivation. So why can't it be cultivated on wood, like shiitake, Oyster mushrooms, the pom pon mushroom, or enoki? In the absence of wood, this species tends to grow as a yeast, adding another problem for potential cultivators, who threw out the subcultures as contaminants, thinking they had one of several hundred species of yeasts, ...

The process is relatively easy once you know the ecology of the growth....

I also found out it's also known as Shiro Kikurage in Japanese (and the kanji/Chinese? 雪耳 -- going off-topic but "kikurage" is the black or tan wavy fungus often found in Chinese (and Japanese) food, and in Japanese means "Tree Jellyfish" -- written in kanji as 木耳. First character is "tree" but the 2nd character is "ear". Above, 雪耳 characters are "snow" and "ear" ). ---maybe I'm the only one who found all these intriguing...

Found this on instagram labeled as purchased at Hmart, so I'll look for it next time I'm there. Maybe they keep them in the front herbal medicinals cases with gingseng, etc.

Here's an approximation of what mine looks like: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ANgTLkgjpIU/U ... re+056.jpg. The lotus seeds are usually only sold at Asian markets; when buying the dates don't buy the sticky Medjool ones (ours are jujubes from the tree). Have fun making it!