Unless you know its name or it flowers, you won't be able to tell.
I don't even know the mechanisms by which sex is determined in dioecious
plants, so a DNA mapping might not help! Stewart, David, or anyone else,
do YOU have a clue?


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Thanks Nick

Article in Science Week indicates that, as you mention, even DNA mapping may
not help. Not that I would want to go to such lengths!

'Many animals and most dioecious plant species, such as Silene latifolia,
have a visibly distinctive X/Y sex chromosome pair. The mammalian Y is
smaller than the X, whereas the S. latifolia Y chromosome is larger than its
X. Many dioecious plants, however, including papaya and kiwi fruit [3], have
no such chromosome heteromorphism; in these species, the sex-determining
genes seem to map to small regions of one normal-looking chromosome'

Just hoping it flowers soon then!