Yesterday I had the pleasure of sharing with Leo three dragonfruit that were new to me. I had the first fruit off my Asunta plant, and I wanted to share that with Leo, and at the same time I had a ripe fruit of Connie Meyer. I brought the Connie Meyer along since the flowers and fruit of Asunta and Connie Meyer are indistinguishable to me and I was unable to use the pollen of one to pollinate the other. Quite by happenstance, Leo had a ripe fruit on his “Bruni” plant which is a sister to Connie Meyer. The unusual thing about all three of these dragonfruit is that they have red-pink flowers as opposed to the standard white flowers in Hylocereus.
I also brought along a fruit from my Selenicereus (now Hylocereus) setaceus for us to sample.
The Asunta, Bruni and Connie Meyer were all medium sized, white fleshed fruits with a very pale pink-green exterior, so much so that for my fruits I had a hard time deciding if they were ripe. They started to color up like my other dragon fruit then stopped. After 60 days post flowering and more that two weeks without any further color development I decided that I would take the chance that they were ripe. Fortunately they were.
The Bruni was a nice fruit slightly bland-sweet but with a wonderful floral rose-like perfume to it. After tasting cactus apples with that same perfume and thinking that it would be very nice to find it in a dragonfruit, I was pleasantly surprised. Brix reading was 21 for this fruit and I quite enjoyed it. Especially for a white fleshed fruit.
Next was Connie Meyer. It was tasty, also pleasantly sweet with a bit of tang to it and tasting much like the Bruni, but without the floral perfume. I also liked this one, it is a very good white fruit and will definitely stay in the collection. The brix reading was 20 for this fruit
Third tasted was the Asunta. For me, this fruit was clearly a step above the first two, with a well balanced sweet tanginess to it and flavors of green grapes and honeydew. Easily the best white fleshed dragonfruit I have tasted to date, and kudos to Edgar Valdivia for creating such a fine hybrid. Definitely a keeper, and one that I would suggest adding to your collection. The brix was 20 for this fruit.
Finally, we tried the setaceus. It is a small fruit, about 200 grams (7ounces), smooth skinned with small fins and spines around the bottom half of the fruit that easily brush off when the fruit is ripe. the interior of the fruit is pink, with a texture that is like a cross between a cactus apple and a dragonfruit (not as crisp as the dragonfruit, nor as mucilagenous as a cactus apple. I find them very sweet, although the brix reading was only 18, with a very complex flavor of grapes and kiwi, and my daughter suggested pineapple. In my opinion, this is a top tier fruit, and can hold its own with any of the red or pink dragonfruit out there.
Connie Meyer
Bruni
Asunta
Asunta flower
