How to Identify A Male and Female Pawpaw Tree

I got some dwarf pawpaw tree seeds from a retired government agricultural expert and planted them in my compound some months ago. I was very happy when they germinated and started growing. They were not growing like the normal pawpaw trees we have in the compound because they were not growing tall and the leaves were not stretching wide. For the dwarf pawpaw tree the leaves were looking very fresh, the stem was not looking stressed and everything on it just looked like a miniaturized version of what the normal ones look like.

Dwarf Pawpaw Tree Has Started Fruiting At Less Than 3 Feet High

I was going by the pawpaw tree yesterday when I needed to check on the rabbits and I noticed something about them. I noticed they had started producing signs of blooming. Now this got me shocked because I was actually thinking it will get to probably the height of my chest which should be about 5 feet before it starts blooming but no, I was wrong, it is not even up to 3 feet high and has started blooming.

Dwarf pawpaw tree has started blooming at less than 3 feet tall

Pawpaw Trees Have Male And Female

I had to check well and see if it was a male or a female pawpaw tree. Yes you read that right, pawpaw trees have male and female trees and they even have hermaphrodites. The way it works in nature is this, the male pawpaw trees produces flowers that pollinate the female trees so that the female trees produce the pawpaw fruit we eat. But we also have situation where the pawpaw tree is non or should I say both male and female and it pollinates itself. Don’t ask me how it works, you can ask nature that. Lol.

How To Differentiate The Male From The Female Pawpaw Tree

People find it difficult to distinguish the difference between the male and the female pawpaw tree and that is the key point of this post. I will show you the difference between a male and a female bloom. First off, if you have a pawpaw tree that has been in your compound for a very long time and it keeps producing flowers but never produces the fruit itself then you’ve got yourself a male pawpaw tree. If you have other pawpaw tree in the same vicinity that is producing the pawpaw fruits then it is best you leave it because it is pollinating the female trees. Let us look at some picture to help us learn more about their differences.

A Male Pawpaw Tree

Source

A male pawpaw tree usually has a long stem like branch that comes forth before the bloom, obviously, this is nature’s way of helping the birds, the wind and other insects or animal have easy access to it so that they can pollinate the female pawpaw trees.

A Female Pawpaw Tree

A typical female pawpaw tree will produce the bloom at the junction of where the leaf branch joins the tree, it does have any long stem like structure coming off the tree before the bloom. These blooms grow larger as time goes by to form what we know as the pawpaw fruit.

Conclusion

The difference between a male and a female pawpaw tree is very easy to identify if you check from where the bloom (flowers) are coming out from. If it starts from the junction where the leaf branch joins the tree then it is a female pawpaw tree, but if there is a long extension the comes out first and then at the end of the extension the bloom appears then that is a male pawpaw tree. For that of the hermaphrodite pawpaw tree I think I’ll leave that to the experts because I’ve read they exist but haven’t seen them.

Picture credit: All pictures used in this post are mine except where a source is indicated to credit the owner. Thanks.

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