Focus on Fruit - Dragon Fruit and Madrono

First off I have to mention that we have been without internet for over 2 weeks. No reading of newspapers or blogs, no researching interesting things, no Mars photos to see. Nothing but a not working white box staring at me on the desk getting me pissed off as Claro continues to charge us as if it worked! On one of my almost weekly trips to the San Sebastian pulgero I found a guy with dragon fruit!!! Most of the vendors have all the same things I have in my yard at this time of year - guineos (bananas), carambola (star fruit), coconuts, calabaza, avocados, culantro (different than cilantro but more alike than different), quenepas. Once and a while though there is something different! One week it was lychees, another week I found a zocato seedling for a buck (kind of a giant cucumber sort of? One of these last weeks there was a basket of beautiful Dragon Fruit! I knew immediately what they were and that I wanted some! Most shoppers had no idea what they were missing. Then I rambled to see what the fruit tree guy had and he had what he called a "Mahone" tree start and fruits in a baggie. I took some fruits and need to go back for the tree!

Dragon Fruit  or Pitaya hylocereus is a succulent/cactus type plant with super cool flowers and fruit! Being a plant person I had read about Pitaya long before I had gotten to PR. When I got here I found a little start at Enaidas Jardineria in Cabo Rojo. I snatched up the ugly plant and planted it at the other house. It bloomed prolifically for a couple years and never got fruit so I went back to Enaidas for a second one figuring it needed to cross pollinate with another of its kind or something. Still no fruit.

I got loads of huge flowers. The flowers bloom maybe from 9 or 10 at night until around 8 in the morning. Bats are the main pollinators. They smell magnificent and it is really cool to see them unfurl from bud stage to an open flower over the course of hours! Kind of like Little Shop of Horrors! Even Tuca the cat was amazed!

The beautiful flowers were on a really ugly plant. Look at that fruit though...totally cool looking with a really good flavor! The seeds are a lot like kiwi seeds - crunchy but soft...the fruit works on a normal salad or a fruit salad...I could see it in some kind of salsa with mango and avocado and onion or simply with star fruit and a little honey (not needed but would look really pretty).  I wanted fruit from my plants and after thinking about it figured if Enaidas was a smart nursery they would simply be propagating from one pitaya. This could explain my lack of fruit. While driving I noticed a huge pitaya plant in the trees on the side of the road. I picked up a piece and planted that. We moved before I got to see if the thing was gonna fruit but...I took a piece of each with me to the Moca house and we will see what it does here! If the guy has the fruit again I will certainly buy some more - he sold them for $1.25 each and they were apple-sized.

So what is the other fruit, the yellow ball? The guy called it a "mahone" but I couldn't find information on it by that name. What I did find calls it a Madrono (tilde over the n ) and another possibility is Rheeda madruno. I may never know the real name, but I have tasted the fruit and will go back for a tree start (hopefully he still has the baggies of fruit - 3 for a $1- and small trees). The fruit is kind of like a longan, or lychee, or quenepa inside (big seed with small amount of pulpy meat over it) and the taste is nice...kind of a sweet/sour refreshing taste. It is like many Puerto Rico fruits - kind of interesting and kind of pointless and kind of yummy all at once. You can't harvest enough to do anything with them, the seed is most of it, they require sucking and spitting out of seeds, and these things would maybe put them on my "pass up" but I like the taste and rank them up there with longans as being better than lychees. I like to wander the yard and graze. So I give a thumbs up to the spiky yellow golf ball and the awesome Dragon Fruit! Plant some today!

It's Showtime! Pitaya Bursts onto the Scene

A year or so ago I was investigating bizarre fruits that I might want to add to the finca. I came across the "Dragon Fruit," or Pitaya (Pitahaya). Since it is a cactus/succulent thing I didn't want to spend some bucks and mail order it so I put it in the back of my mind. Then I was at Eneida's Nursery in Cabo Rojo and whalla...there one was for $1.50. I thought our elevation was too high and we might be too wet but for that price I went for it. For a year I have been ignoring the ugly little plant and was just about to move it to a better climbing spot when some giant buds appeared!

We got a little rain and these buds tripled in size and got all elongated.

Then they started to do the "Little Shop of Horrors" thing (minus the singing)..I swear the bracts were moving and dancing about.

So every day several times a day I watched.

And watched some more.

Then I did an evening check (they are nighttime bloomers and it is only for around 18 hours or so) and they had burst into action! They were HUGE and beautiful and did I say huge?

Look at the size of them, they are almost coconut sized! They also had a very nice scent which I didn't expect.

So there in our yard are these gigantic blooms just waiting for bats to pollinate them. The only bad thing is that I probably won't get fruit since you need two different plants. There is a plant some miles away in the jungle but I have not seen buds or flowers on it.

With or without the fruit it is very exciting to witness the blooms since they are so short lived. I did some finger pollinating but it won't work. It just makes me scan websites for possibly the pink flowering one so next year (actually they bloom more than once a year) I can get fruit. Since they are so easy to propagate it is possible Eneida's uses one plant for stock so I don't want to get one from there. I can, however head to the jungle spot and break off a section to start...yeah that's what I'll do. If you haven't seen the fruit you should look it up on line. Supposedly you can eat them fresh as dessert or savory but I have only had them dried.

Look at all the frilly parts.This photo was at 6 in the morning just before it wilted into non-existence.

Pretty sensational!

Another addition to the finca is yet another cat. This little, and I mean little, kitty showed up hungry and very affectionate last night. What are we supposed to do? Ignore the hunger cries? Ignore the purring and rubbing? Well, we decided to ignore the protests of the other 11 until Jeff can find someone at work to take him or the other cats get tired of being bent out of shape about it. It slept inside, tried to pal around with the other hissing growling ones and curled up somewhere inside since we awoke to some little meows...anyone want a very nice little kitty?

Plant Progress

These are mini carambolas (star fruit). I'm anxious to try a fresh one since all I know is the shriveled supermarket ones in the states.


Our grove of papayas have grown from seed to splendid trees that already have a whole lot of fruit on them (we are eating our second one). The seeds were from 3 or 4 different types of papayas so it is interesting to see the different shapes and flesh colors. We've got more than 20 trees. I figured some would die and 1/3 would be male and then I would be left with a reasonable amount. Nope. Most were female, all lived and it is a good thing we have the dehydrator!

The dragon fruit has gotten all kinds of new growth on it (light green parts). I wonder if I'll ever get fruit from it?

Our coconuts are producing way more than we can drink as coco frios! We've got probably 5 or 6 trees all full of coconuts - the kind you drink, not the meat ones. Of the meat type we have only one tree and we keep getting gifts from above. Coconut is evil though - totally saturated fat and lots of it! (that's why it tastes so good - sugar and fat hold the world together!)

Orchids and a Pitahaya

We've got orchids hanging in baskets under the Maria Tree and a couple of them are blooming! This one had a couple sprays like this one (they are at the end but nice anyway).


This is the first time I have seen this large one bloom. For an orchid this is a pretty large flower!

A friend just gave us this orchid this weekend - believe it or not it is vanilla bean - the kind you cook with! I don't know what I thought the plant would look like, but I didn't realize that vanilla is an orchid! I haven't decided where to train it - probably just on the Maria Tree branch (one that isn't covered in Philodendron).

What is this thing a photo of? When we got here there was barbed wire along the driveway fencing off what is now guineo/papaya land . We didn't like all the fencing and wanted to put the bottom area to use so we took it down. There were however a couple of these super heavy and immovable cement posts. Hmmm, what can I do with those? They look weird. So I have planted a Pitahaya (dragon fruit) and am training it up the post and then will connect the two posts with some sort of structure for it. The dragon fruit is a cactus that produces flowers over 2 feet across!!! The fruit is kind of cool as well. I have only had it dried but this plant has cool factor! Do a web search on it and take a look at the fruit and flowers - way way cool!