My first ever Maridol Papaya flower budding..

If it has one flower bud more are sure to form. It's a good time of the year to bloom. This means by late summer you should have fruit (if it's a bi-sexual flower). Papayas are very strange plants. They can have only female or males flowers...or they can have male, female and bi-sexual flowers. A female tree can become male or vice-versa. This is why I just let my papayas grow. Because even male plants can produce fruit. Years ago, I had a male papaya plant which turned female and produced huge, delicious fruit. Mother Nature is wonderful!

Here's some pics of male papaya plant producing fruit.

http://www.growsonyou.com/photo/slideshow/120347-carica-papaya-male-producing-papaya/tag/papaya

Most of these papaya pics are mine. There's several pages.

http://www.growsonyou.com/photo/tag/papaya

Andy,what do you make of the red petioles?
I can't imagine this small plant having even remotely ripe fruit.
ONLY..as with the marble sized Mango fruit taught me last year- once the tree can fruit,their fruits size might be smaller but just as tasty.
Thats a big if.

The red petioles are not uncommon. lol! My Maradol papaya has red petioles.

You'd be surprised...small papayas produce large fruit all the time (look on the internet). I see several dozen small and large papayas trees on my drive to work. One person has plastic covering the papayas so the birds don't eat them, I guessing. I used to have problems with birds eating my papayas, now they don't bother my papayas.

If a papaya ripens on the plant it will almost 99 percent of the time be very sweet and taste so, so good!