Dragon Fruit, or HuǒLóngGuǒ

Oh, heavens to Betsey, will you just look at this thing? I picked up this dragon fruit, or 火龍果 huǒlóngguǒ (literally: fire dragon fruit) in Flushing Queens, or shehekheyuni-land. According to the plant name database, this fruit is also known as Belle of the night, Cinderella plant, Dragon-fruit, Night-blooming cereus, Pitahaya, Queen-of-the-night, Red pitahaya, Strawberry-pear.

Mordkhe Schaechter’s Plant Names in Yiddish has no listing for Hylocereus undatus, or any other hylocereus species (this is the first plant to have stumped Schaechter in my experience, and I have looked up a lot of plants), so according to the international rules for fruit-finding neologists, I get to make one up. I think we need two, actually. I suggest פּיטײַע and פּיפּערנאָטער־באַר (dragon-pear).

The white flesh is mild and mildly sweet, just a bit flowery. It can be scooped with a melon-baller or cut into some snazzy looking wedges and eaten out of hand. When I saw these, the second thing I thought was that I just had to try them. The first thing I thought was, I wonder if Sweetnicks has seen these before?

What do you think? Is this the most stupendous and wonderful plant to appear on this blog? Or was it this finger-citron (Yiddish here)? Are these little red eggplants stupendous enough to be included in the same category?

antioxidant-rich foods, dragon fruit, pitaya