One of the most remarkable characteristics of the papaw is that it is polygamous—­that is to say, there may be male and female and even hermaphrodite flowers on the same plant.  Commonly the plants are classed as male and female.  The males largely predominate.  Many horticulturists have sought by the selection of seeds and by artificial fertilisation to control the sex of the plant so that the fruit-bearing females shall be the more numerous, but in vain.  Some, on the theory that the female generally obtains a more vigorous initial start in life, and in very infancy presents a more robust appearance, heroically weed out weak and spindly seedlings with occasionally happy results.  The mild Hindoo, however, who has cultivated the papaw (or papai to adopt the Anglo-Indian title) for centuries, and likewise wishes to avoid the cultivation of unprofitable male plants, seeks by ceremonies to counteract the bias of the plant in favour of masculine attributes.  Without the instigation or knowledge of man or boy, a maiden, pure and undefiled, takes a ripe fruit from a tree at a certain phase of the moon, and plants the seed in accordance with more or less elaborate ritual.  The belief prevails that these observances procure an overwhelming majority of the female element.  The problem of sex, which bewilders the faithless European, is solved satisfactorily to the Hindoo by a virgin prayerful and pure.

On plants which have hitherto displayed only masculine characteristics, small, pale yellow, sweetly-scented flowers on long, loosely-branched axillary panicles, may appear partially or fully developed female organs which result in fructification, and such fruit is ostentatiously displayed.  The male produces its fruit not as does the female, clinging closely and compact to the stem, but dangling dangerously from the end of the panicles—­an example of witless paternal pride.  This fruit of monstrous birth does not as a rule develop to average dimensions, and it is generally woodeny of texture and bitter as to flavour, but fully developed as to seeds.

The true fruit is round, or oval, or elongated, sometimes pear-shaped, and with flattened sides, due to mutual lateral pressure.  As many as 250 individual fruits have been counted on a single tree at one and the same time.  The heaviest fruit within the ken of the writer weighed 8 lb. 11 oz.  They hug the stem closely in compact single rows in progressive stages, the lower tier ripe, the next uppermost nearly so, the development decreasing consistently to the rudiments of flower-buds in the crown of the tree.  The leaves fall as the fruit grows, but there is always a crown or umbrella to ward off the rays of the sun.  When ripe, the most approved variety is yellow.  In the case of the female plant growing out of the way of a male, the fruit is smaller in size, and seedless or nearly so.

Another curious, if not unique point about this estimable plant is that sometimes within the cavity of a perfect specimen will be found one or two infant naked fruits, likewise apparently perfect.  Occasionally these abnormal productions are crude, unfashioned and deformed.