The sad state the male Red Lady papaya tree was in before we said goodbye to it.
Well darn. Our one and only male Red Lady papaya tree has decided to leave us prematurely. Just last week we noticed that the leaves were starting to die out at the crown, while the rest of the leaves started turning yellow one by one, then brown, then hung limply on the tree as the stems weren’t ready to drop off just yet.
My best guess is that the tree couldn’t take the excessive wet weather. In fact, I’d like that to be the reason, rather than find out the tree was diseased. It is highly possible, though, as it’s common knowledge that papaya trees don’t like “wet feet”. The only problem with this is that the tree’s sisters only 2 metres away in either direction don’t seem to be suffering the same problem. Yet. Mr Papaya Tree actually felt a bit wobbly when the trunk was rocked a little, so that showed that the roots weren’t good any more.
Even the crown of the tree felt a little squishy when pinched. That being the case, we bade farewell to it and have our fingers crossed that our existing trees are hermaphrodites and not just females, otherwise it’s bye-bye to new Red Lady papayas. 
Here are some of the highlights of Mr Red Lady Papaya Tree’s life:
Clusters of male papaya flowers. They will be missed.
A closer look at the male papaya flower.
The base of the male tree was significantly broader than the female trees. Looks like female papaya trees have "no hips" while the males do!
I guess it’s time to start sowing seeds again – if they’re still viable!
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What a waste.
But yes, if at least 1 of your remaining trees is hermaphrodite, it means you can pollinate the other female flowers anyway, right?
(*cross fingers for you*)
Well the trees set fruit before Mr P. Tree came along, so let’s hope……..
Oh no … how sad. Thanks for the papaya. It was super, super sweet. Hope you’ll sow the seeds again !
I will, Trish. Hope they’re still viable.
Well, at least u got some fruits from your tree(s). Used to hv 3, the robust one for no rhymne or reason upped and withered away, like yours. One is a midget, doing nothing at all and the last one, while looks healthy and all, produced many flowers, but only one reached fruition. Even so, the fruit is at least a couple of months old and not growing much. Since there’s still life in both these very disappointing and ungrateful trees, I’ll let them live until their natural demise.
Miki, that’s why I grew several trees – to make sure we had a mix of male, female and hermaphrodite trees. I’m not sure if my fruiting trees are female or hermaphrodites, and if they’re the former, then apart from the fruits currently growing on the trees, we may not get any more unless someone in the neighbourhood has a male trees that the insects carry the pollen over for us. At worst, we’ll have ornamental trees!
Yeah, ornamental is nice but nowadays I’m more interested in plants that “feed” me. I grow some common ones that I use often, like mint, chinese celery or parsley, chilli padi, onions, and chives. I’m always confused between the chinese parsley and cilantro (coriander). I hv a bunch of very unhappy trees, I guess, cuz they don’t fruit and if they do, I get a handful. My persimmon tree gave me 4 small fruits this year, my Fuji apple, nothing, my tangerine, a handful and an old orange tree that has finally produced one fruit! Talk about mini blessings. I will definitely prune the trees to see if they will do better. Upon research on the net, there were suggestions to whack the trees with a 2×4. I did that to all the trees awhile ago. I hv seen no discernible difference between then and now. Frustrating! Two other tangerine trees, while looking healthy enough, have not produced a thing. Oh well, I’ll wait for them to pick up their feet. All’s not lost, though, cuz in the summer, my blueberry bush was a prolific producer! Amen! The berries were sweet. I was frustrated with an old rue that looked real raggedy, so I cut off all its leaves and now, it’s doing very well. Pruning sure seems to be working. Later.