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.
Why some vines produce yellow baby flower and some are not.In flowering process do we need to water the cactus every day or what are the reguirement and fertilizer to produce more fruit to prolong developing fruits.
I started a dragonfruit this spring from a short piece use beneath one of those weird red or yellow ball cactus grafted ones sold around Christmas. It has grown to about 8 inches. I don’t know what color the fruit is yet but it is an amazing cactus. Walmart carries them all year.
Hi there I live in Vancouver BC and I recently got myself a dragonfruit plant only about 15 inches tall, does anyone have any tips or suggestions on growing these funky plants in my climate and also wondering how long before they actually bear fruit? Thanks for any and all help!
They can’t take freezing, so you’ll need to protect it for about half of the year in Vancouver. Lots of sun if you can. You are kinda in their opposite preferred climate. Ours fruit on any year old (or more) stalks. Best of luck!
thank you for your info, but I have a question…….we have had 1 dragon fruit plant now for about 4 years….we planted it out as the seller/grower told us to do and for the first few months it did really well growing up to 7 foot tall but there is where it has stopped. We put a “trellis” up for it but it hasn’t even “branched” out yet, still just one “trunk”…..wondering what we’re doing wrong 🙁 We live in Sarina near Mackay in Central Queensland and the grower only lived 20 min away……
Thank you. This is wonderful information. I also got my plants at a market in Western Australia and after a 2 years of getting the spikes grabbing me when I get too close it has produced a flower bud..only one so perhaps I won’t get a fruit but it is fun watching this bud grow larger every day. If anyone in Perth’s Northern suburbs has a flower that I can collect pollen from please let me know. I am happy to share a cutting or two.
Karen iv just bought 300 plants,you may need more then 1 plant to get proper pollination,im in the northern suburbs also of Perth.
Dragonfruit is pollinated by a moth, but can also be hand pollinated. You can check on YouTube how to hand pollinate your dragon fruit flower. You have to catch it blooming, I know that much. I have one about ready to bloom any day now, so I’m going to lose sleep until it blossoms. Blossoms at midnight and stays bloomed for about five hours, then it dies. The bloom is huge and magnificent! It’s worth losing a little bit of sleep to see it!
Hi there
i have 3 plants that were given to me when they were only a couple inches tall its been only 10 months now and they are about 14″ tall now but I’ve been growing they under artificial light yup florescent lights and they are doing wonderful can’t wait to see how it all turns out . I live in alberta Canada it get very cold here in the winter , ill keep you informed how it all doing.
I was wondering at what time of the year you have harvest of pitahaya in Vietnam or other asian countries. Wonderful pictures!
Hello
I am interested in growing dragon fruit in my farm in gujrat but i have no idea so ur idea will be help full
About what kind of climate,soil,water etc.
Thanks
Fantastic info on Dragon fruit. I live in Perth Western Australia and bought a cutting of it at a local market with a fruit growing on it for $2 (aus) 3 years ago and I now, off that small cutting have 3 huge hanging baskets growing along our patio. One of mine started growing a flower(OMG the excitement and anticipation)for about 2 1/2 weeks and it opened tonight and wow amazing.
Thanks for your info it was very helpful.
Hello everyone,very much enjoyed all the info on Dragon Fruit.Would like to know if anyone would be willing to share Or sell a cutting. Sure hope so.Thanks and hope you all have a great day
I would like to grow dragon fruit in my field but i dont no anything about the plant.
Hey, I have up until recently been growing the red skinned white flesh variety when I found a stall at local markets having the yellow skinned ones, so I bought 3 of them to try, ate 2 which tasted a lot like a type of grape grandmother used to grow, so i planted the seeds from the third one hoping to grow them which they have been in pots till I can set up a post and frame to grow them on.
The only thing I have noticed with the yellow fruit is they have spines similar to prickly pear fruit.
Our Dragon Fruit plants were already established when we bought our home 11 years ago here in Queensland, Australia. One is in the ground and growing up and over the back of our garage and the other is in a pot in a small shaded green house type structure that is attached to the side of our garage. Both plants have flowered during the years but it is only this year that we have been delighted in noticing one single solitary fruit. Any thoughts on why only one fruit and also why would it decide bare fruit after so long. We have no idea just how long the plants were already there before we moved in.
Hi Heather. Some dragonfruit need particular pollinators and without them they’ll need to be hand pollinated in order to get the fruit to set. We are growing about 5 different type of dragonfruit right now and one of them is like that. It is kind of hard to describe in a few words how to hand pollinate, but if you google it you should be able to find a good tutorial. Good luck.
What a fantastic post! I have two varieties of dragon fruit – yellow and red – and they’ve been growing well for two years, but not flowering. I live in western oz, so they get plenty of sun! Any idea how to encourage the flower? Thanks, g
For us we make sure to fertilize regularly to encourage flowers. Also, for our varieties, they flower on the older branches and tend to flower better on those which are flowing back downward. To get them to go down, we’ll grow them on a frame or ironwork about 5-6 feet high, tying them to the center as they grow up. After the branches reach the top of the frame, they’ll start to flow back downwards, like a very stiff weeping tree. Hope that helps. Good luck! BTW-our yellow centered one is super delicious. Hope yours will be the same!
T & D
Thank you for sharing this. Ive experience seeing the the beautiful flower of a dragon fruit at my rooftop garden. Through this article, my question on what’s next after flowering was answered. I can share my photos if you like. Thank you very much.
There are many blogs out there. Few are as enjoyable, entertaining, inspiring, and informative as yours. Gardening didn’t occur to me before I found your site. A vegetable garden intimidates me to the core (just this season my peas and kale failed), but dragon fruit, blood oranges, and wisteria…now that is something to fight for!