Mystery Fruit

Discover the mysterious and many-named dragonfruit (chickenette, strawberry pear...)

by Gail Karlsson

For years I have been doing battle with the scratching, stinging, burning bush plants out in the yard that always manage to creep back and attack me, reminding me that this is their land, not mine. I have learned to respect the stinging nettles, catch-and-keep and Christmas bush, but I have never had anything but scorn for that snaky cactus that lies around on the ground or climbs up on rocks and then wraps around my ankles or bites my feet. 

Now, after all those years of chopping up the snaky cactus with clippers and tossing it down the hill in disgust, I have learned that it is the source not only of the famed night blooming cereus flower, but also of the highly prized, hitherto unknown to me, dragonfruit. Amazing ignorance, though I have to say that some other friends I consulted had also never heard of anything called dragonfruit.

Of course, local botanist Eleanor Gibney knew what it was, though she said Virgin Islanders called it chickenette. Actually, it seems there are two similar types of snaky cactus, one native and one cultivated, that produce similar fruits. The smaller native fruits are from a plant with the botanical name Hylocereus trigonus, and besides chickenette, they are also called strawberry pears. The larger ones are from Hylocereus undatus, which is widely cultivated, especially in Asia, and are called dragonfruit (because the skin resembles that of a scaly (pink) dragon).

When I asked Eleanor about the reason for the local name chickenette, she said she thought there was something mentioned about that in C.G.A. Oldendorp's history of the Moravian Church in the Virgin Islands. Sure enough, Oldendorp said that it seemed to be a contraction of ‘chigger apple,' referring to the small black seeds inside the fruit, which apparently reminded someone of chiggers, tiny mites that can get under your skin and cause an itchy rash. Not the most appetizing imagery.

The night-blooming cereus flowers are very large and fragrant and open up only for one night. Night-flying bats and moths come to pollinate them. I have heard that people growing them will invite people over to sit up and watch the flowers bloom, though I wonder if having an audience scares off the would-be pollinators. Anyway, if the bats and moths do their job well, within a few weeks there will be delicious fruits that are full of antioxidants and fiber.  

It turns out that one of the reasons I could never get rid of the cactus on the ground in my yard by pulling them up and tossing them is that they don't need to be rooted in the ground. They are epiphytic, meaning they can grow using just air roots. So wherever I tossed them they were still growing, and the chopped pieces left in the yard kept on growing, too. In fact, because of their resilient growing capacity, little pieces of Hylocereus are commonly used as the base plant for grafting on little ornamental cactus plants that look like brightly-colored pin cushions. (The bright little cactuses have no chlorophyll and can't sustain themselves without the green Hylocereus base that is able to photosynthesize.)

Now that I know about these plants, I am going to stick some of them in pots instead of throwing them down the hill. Then maybe I can have my own night-blooming party one day, and my own harvest of carefully cultivated dragonfruit, or chickenettes.   

Gail Karlsson is an environmental lawyer and author of The Wild Life in an Island House. You can contact her at gkarlsson@worldnet.att.net.

Dragon Fruit Mojito

Certain members of the Sun Times staff (Kelly), were really excited to see Jason at La Plancha Del Mar pull out a dragonfruit the other day and turn it into a delicious and exotic mojito. In fact, that drink was the inspiration for doing a story about dragonfruit in the first place. We thought it only fair to share the recipe here.

Muddle together:
1 slice dragonfruit (rind removed)
3 wedges lime
8-12 mint leaves
¼ oz. simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water reduced by half)
Fill glass with ice and add:
1 3/4 - 2oz  Light Rum
Fill with soda, shake, and garnish with a twist of dragonfruit rind.

Recipe courtesy of Jason Howard, La Plancha Del Mar

November 2009