Papaya and The Sexes
For the first 21 years I lived here, I always had a producing papaya tree. When I knew one was within two years of its life span, I would plant another and by the time the last one was no more, the next one would be producing fruit. This is now the only papaya tree left, and it has taken two years to produce fruit, but it is very strange fruit indeed as instead of growing in a clump at the top, the papayas grow at the end of very long cordlike stems that hang down a few feet from the stem. Pasiano told me today that this is a male tree and that the fruit is inedible, but my next door neighbor, to whom I gave a tree produced from the same seed that grew this one, says their tree is growing fruit in the same manner and revealed that they are hermaphrodite trees! I Googled the term and this is what I learned:
Papayas come in three sexual varieties: male, female and hermaphrodite. The hermaphrodite produces the flavorful fruit that is sold commercially.
Every day a new surprise!!! David and Sergio next door are netting their papayas to protect them. Today I planted new seed and was planning on cutting my tree down, but guess I’ll do the same and bag my fruit and see what happens. Monkey see, monkey do.
Above was the former post and below is today’s addition:
Today’s developments: Well, I did bag the fruit and only took the bags off a week or so ago. The fruit is a bit bigger and one had nearly ripened. Other than that, they looked pretty much like they did 4 1/2 months ago. Then today I went out and two had fallen to the ground. One looked ripe, but the other was still green. I was going to toss them but then at the last minute decided to bring them inside. A little worm had started to dine on the ripe one, but the hole it had made was only about the size of a dime and not much deeper, so I brushed off the worm, scooped out the tiny part he had dined on and brought the fruit in and rinsed it off with water from the garrafone and set it on the counter.
That was about 12 hours ago. It is now a bit past 9 PM and when I went into the kitchen for a drink of water (and to be truthful, to polish off the remains of a carton of ice cream) I noticed the ripe papaya and decided to slice it open and see what it was like inside. It was about the size of a large cucumber or zucchini–8 inches long and about 2 inches wide. I sliced the end off and saw that it was a lovely color. I decided to scoop all the seeds out and to slice it in 1 inch slices, removing the peel of each round of papaya. Luckily, I had ordered 4 ice tea spoons on the internet a few months ago and one of them was perfect for removing the seeds. It was long enough to reach all the way to the end of the papaya and exactly the right size to remove the seeds without removing any of the flesh. I removed seeds from the first 4 inches or so, sliced one circle and cut off the skin. Then I couldn’t resist taking a bite. OMG! It was the sweetest and tastiest papaya I had ever eaten! The texture was perfect and it was go good that it was enough to turn a girl off chocolate! I continued slicing it, put it all in a small soup bowl and put it into the fridge for breakfast with Saran Wrap over it to preserve the freshness. Here is a photo of the end result. This is the entire papaya except for the one piece I ate:
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 