PAPAYA CULTUTiE IN HAWAII 
13 
ing the first year, but usually it takes place after several years of 
growth. Some of the staminate plants at the Hawaii station have 
produced a few fruits in their second or third years only, although 
they lived for four or five years afterwards. Old plants occasionally 
develop the greater number of fruit-producing flowers. A plant 
under the writer's observation for more than eight years has been 
found to be a continuous producer, bearing a cluster of 20 to 60 
developing fruits at a time. The fruits are usually uniform in shape, 
oblong, about 7 or 8 inches in length, and weigh about a pound. 
(Fig. 8.) The flesh 
is pale yellow and of 
inferior flavor. The 
seeds are indistin- 
guishable from those 
of other papayas. 
The fruits are easily 
identified as to the 
kind of plant pro- 
ducing them, and 
locally they are com- 
monly called male 
papayas. In an ex- 
periment at the Ha- 
waii station in 1923 
the seeds of one of 
these papayas were 
planted in a propa- 
gating box in the 
usual way and gave 
a good percentage of 
germination. Some 
of the plants were se- 
lected at random and 
were set in an experi- 
mental row, where 
they remained until 
the latter part of 
1926. In the cool 
season of 1924-25 
they came into flower. 
Fifty-seven per cent 
had normal stami- 
nate flowers, whereas the rest produced normal pistillate flowers and 
fruit common to the dioecious type. This was the only experiment of 
the past eight years in which seeds of the male tree were used. 
Higgins (&, p. 20) states that fruit-producing staminate plants 
were first described by Correa de Mello and Spruce (lo, p. 3) and 
named the " correae form " in honor of the former. A study of the 
papaya flower at the station indicates that these fruiting staminate 
plants are not distinct sex forms but only variations of certain 
staminate flowers in which the rudimentary pistil becomes perfect 
and produces fruit. Kesults of experiments made at the station 
Figure 11. — Papaya plant. With the extension of the 
trunk the fruit is changing from long spindle shape to 
oblong with distinct five longitudinal ridges 
