Hertzsprung-Russell diagram for the observed objects in M17. The blue dots show the location of the targets for which we found evidence of a gaseous disk; the green triangles denote the stars that show IR excess longward of 2.5 μm and no emission lines in their spectra. The grey squares show the objects without disk signatures. The stars for which the parameters are derived using FASTWIND are shown with filled symbols. The open symbols represent the stars for which log  L/L_⊙ and T_eff were derived from their spectral type. The ZAMS is represented by the thick black line and the solid lines correspond to PMS tracks from Hosokawa & Omukai (2009) with the ZAMS mass labelled and the lifetimes indicated as open symbols. The dotted, dashed, and dashed-dotted lines are the birth lines for accretion rates of 10^-3, 10^-4, and 10^-5M_⊙ yr^-1, respectively. The grey lines indicate radii of 1, 10, and 30 R_⊙.