Subject: Papaya specimen plant is TOO tall

From: [email-masked] (B E Liedl)
Date: 20 Oct 1995 08:11:40 -0400

Help!  We need suggestions on what to do with a Papaya specimen plant
which is too tall.  I teach at a small liberal arts college in Biology. 
We have an unusual greenhouse that is two stories tall.  The papaya plant
is probably 15 feet tall with a trunk about 6-7 inches in diameter,
healthy and grows like a weed (repotted last year and it has added 4-5
feet of growth in the last 9 months).   We want to keep the specimen for
our small botanical collection, but we are running out of greenhouse
height!  Help.  Someone suggested air layering, but we don't want to be
wrong and lose the plant.  I am comfortable doing most plant propagation
techniques (being a Horticulturalist by training), but don't want to lose
a good specimen in my first year on the job!

Thanks,

Barbara

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From: [email-masked] (Ling WangChoon)
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 1995 21:16:29 +0800

[email-masked] (B E Liedl) wrote:

>height!  Help.  

I have a papaya plant growing under a power line, two years ago, it was
too tall, I saw off the top half of the tree and wrapped the cut end of
the trunk with plastic sheet so that it covered 50 cm of the top end of
the trunk, water accumulation inside the trunk was expected to cause the
trunk to rot. The tree is still fruiting, fewer fruits number because of
the reduction in tree size.
I hope the procedure works also in non-tropical condition.

regards
[email-masked]

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