The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Carica ×heilbornii var. pentagona
Babaco is a hybrid cultivar from Ecuador, grown mainly for its seedless, pentagonal, papaya-like fruit, and it is a small tree of 5 to 8 m. It needs frost-free warmth and a sheltered site, and it is cultivated well beyond its native range.
The babaco (Vasconcellea × heilbornii; syn. Carica pentagona), is a hybrid cultivar in the genus Vasconcellea from Ecuador. It is a hybrid between Vasconcellea cundinamarcensis (syn. Carica pubescens, "mountain papaya"), and Vasconcellea stipulata (syn. Carica stipulata, "toronche") although Vasconcellea weberbaueri has also been mentioned as a contributor to the hybrid.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Babaco by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
