Question: When did dragon fruit come to us here in Hawaii? Seems kinda recent to me, but one of my gardening writing friends tells me it’s been here since the late 1800s. Please inform. Mahalo. — KD, Kahala
Answer: I’d heard the night-blooming cereus has been here for a long time and has an interesting survival at sea/revival by horticulture story. But I had also heard the dragon fruit-bearing plant had arrived more recently. So, I did some digging and the answer is both.
Ken Love, one of my go-to fruit experts, said Big Island farmer Gregg Adams brought the plants from Vietnam in the late 1960s or early ’70s. Since then others have introduced cultivars from places such as Israel.
The plant, which is a type of cactus, is native to Mexico and Central America where we get the common name pitaya or pitahaya. Now widely grown by masterful horticulturists and entrepreneurial farmers in Thailand and Vietnam, dragon fruit is being seen more in Hawaii home gardens.
The most famous planting of night-blooming cereus (aka panini o ka Punahou) in Hawaii is on the rock wall surrounding Punahou School in Makiki.
Horticulturist Richard Criley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa has been monitoring the night-blooming cereus’ flowering cycles at Punahou for about 20 years, and sometimes sees fruit. He contends that hand-pollination is needed for the plants to set fruit here in Hawaii.
It’s possible that when dragon fruit was brought here in the 1960s, farmers and young scientists were hand-pollinating them, resulting in a fruit harvest.
THE DRAGON fruit’s scientific genus is Hylocereus. H. undatus is the white-fleshed one, H. roja is the red-fruited one and H. amarilla has a brilliant yellow skin.
Hylocereus undatus first landed in Hawaii around 1830 on the brig Ivanhoe, which was carrying plants collected in Mexico. Most of them died and were tossed overboard, and the nearly dead, dried-out Cereus cutting looked like a goner, but First Officer Charles Brewer took care of it on the voyage and planted it in Honolulu, according to “In Gardens of Hawaii” by Marie Neal.
They are fun to grow if you don’t mind thorns. The stalks are heavy and need support on a sturdy trellis or fence.
Its thorny stems send out aerial roots from the nodes, or sections of stem. You can grow it from cuttings, but watch out. It looks innocent at first, but as it grows it can take over your rock wall, climb up slopes or trees, or even up your utility poles and lines.
(This happened at my parents’ home and they were without a phone for three weeks!)
Dragon fruit has some great nutrients, too: It’s high in lycopene, as are tomatoes and watermelon, and is a good source of calcium and iron.
The red-fleshed fruit is gorgeous especially in a mixed fruit platter. To me the white one is more ono but less colorful and pretty.
Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable landscape consultant specializing in native, xeric and edible gardens. Reach her at heidibornhorst@gmail.com.
