What is Dragon Fruit? Life Cycle of Dragon Fruit
What is Dragon fruit? We love sharing our photos to explain how amazing this tropical fruit is. 
This post was one of our first recipe posts back in 2008. It’s fun to see how our photography and garden has changed over the years!
After reading this article, check our more of our previous write ups:
- 2014: Gorgeous and freshly picked!
- Dragon Fruit Salad Recipe
- 2009 – Dragon Fruit Flowers
- 2008 – Dragon Fruit growing on the vine and more Dragon fruit recipes
- 2007 – Cool pictures showing the whole life cycle of Dragon fruit plants
What is Dragon Fruit?
Check out our photos and the whole cycle of flower to fruit. A funky addition and curious conversation piece to our garden is the Dragon Fruit (Thanh Long in Vietnamese). Also called Pitaya or Strawberry Pear, this fruit is one of several varieties of cactus plant fruits prized in Southeast Asia. The numerous, sprawling branches of this fleshy cacti reach out and climb on to anything that crosses it’s path. Just like a dragon or serpent snaking it’s way in all different directions, the spiny plant itself is really easy to grow in warm, hot , sunny areas. Propagation just takes one strong cutting planted in good soil and you can have a whole farm of plants within two years.
We grow the red/pink skinned, white center variety. The thin skin can be peeled, revealing a white center filled with small, black , edible seeds. Eating the fruit and interior seeds has a texture similar to that of kiwi fruit. It’s really a slightly sweet, mild flavored fruit and is best when eaten fresh. Savoring it this way makes it worth the high price tag it can fetch at the store or farmers market. Dad just gave us some cutting for a red skinned, red center variety. Hopefully next years harvest will be good.
Photos of How Dragon Fruit Grows from Flower to Fruit
Watching the complete life cycle of this unique plant and see them ripen over a period of 3-4 months is cool. The fruit grows on top of the branches and over this growth period, the fruit is nurtured to a plump, large, orange sized beauty.
Baby flower buds …so cute!
Mature flowers at full bloom!
POP !! Believe it or not, this beauty only lasts for 1 day! After that, it’s like….
All done!
Now comes the fruit growing at the base of the drying flower
More to come…this fruit is still ripening. The harvest should be in about 2 more weeks! Here’s a great dragon fruit smoothie recipe.
I live near Phoenix Az and I bought a dragon fruit plant its about 3″ high with one arm on it and it looks like it has a flower bud on it, haven’t planted it in the planter yet need one more bag of soil, the company didn’t send any instructions with it and it’s in soil already is there a way I can send a photo of it to you so you can tell me if it’s a flower or not before I cut the arm off?
Hi Michelle! We think you should keep the arm on to allow the plant to continue growing and branching. It’s the older arm/branches that produces the flowers. Once we get the plant to be the size that we want, we start clipping all the new branches. That way, what remains are the older branches and we always get TONS of flowers, resulting in fruit. Sure, you can send us a photo if you like and we can take a look at it.
I planted a couple in October, about 2 feet tall, now in February they are over 5 feet tall and sprouting babies like crazy. How long before they bloom and one of them has an entire 6 foot “stalk” completely covered, every thorn sprout is developing into a actual arm, can I safely eliminate any of them? Thank you, all info appreciated