You’re so pretty,” I tell the dragon fruits ripening in my yard. “You grow big now!” I am their stalwart cheerleader. Their beginnings are always unexpected: One day a green marble sprouts amid the thorny, twisting arms of a dragon fruit plant, a bud that will eventually stretch nearly a foot long. Weeks later, in the dim of a dying day, it blooms​, ​tendril-like petals unfurling like a giant white anemone until a majestic flower looks up at the night sky.

Illustration: James Nakamura

In the morning, the bloom hangs limp, nature’s lesson in ephemera. But its heart cradles a dragon fruit.  It’s these orbs I talk to as they burgeon, and at the first blush of pink, I wrap them in newspaper to thwart bulbuls and mejiro. Inside their paper sheaths, my dragon fruits become globular and voluptuous with a delicate sweetness.

When the time comes, I tell my friend, there’ll be a dragon fruit with her name on it.

The fruits looked like products of an acid trip: red and gold rambutans resembling hairy lychee​,​ cherimoyas like jade green grenades​,​ and dragon fruits, the wackiest of them all.

 

“I don’t eat dragon fruit,” she says.

Fine. I pack pristine slices for the office and reveal their perfection to my lucky co​workers.

“No, thank you,” says my boss.

“I’m good,” says the digital editor.

“Oh. OK, sure,” says the creative director. I can tell he feels sorry for me.

Only the senior art director accepts with a smile. I think it’s because she’s vegetarian.

All of you, you know what? Don’t diss my dragon fruit. I grew it. From a stalk I got from the Board of Water Supply’s H​ā​lawa xeriscape garden, after years of failing with seeds I found in my suitcase after a trip to Vietnam. That’s where I discovered dragon fruit, overflowing baskets at a ​market down Co Bac Street when I lived in Ho Chi Minh City.

The fruits looked like products of an acid trip: red and gold rambutans resembling hairy lychee​,​ cherimoyas like jade green grenades​,​ and dragon fruits, the wackiest of them all. They looked like fake fruits, their shiny, Barbie-pink skins erupting with fluorescent green fins. I watched a man peel one like a banana, devour it whole and toss the empty skin onto a trash heap—and I was captivated.

Dragon fruits are a touchpoint to my Vietnam, to a long-ago chapter when the world was mysterious and thrilling and fresh. I get that you may not be as enthralled. But here’s the thing: Among the ignorant, dragon fruits are victims of their own beauty. Those at the market, puny and blemish-free, are picked at the peak of their glossy pinkness, not at their peak of flavor. Mine may have faded skins and shriveled leaves, but look at their bursting fullness. Feel their weightiness. These are the true beauties. Keep a dragon fruit in the fridge, and on a warm summer day, slice it and eat it like a watermelon. Then you’ll understand. The juicy, pearlike nexus between firm and yielding, the mildness of kiwi without mush or tang. The flavor, I’ll admit, won’t knock your socks off. If you want a hit of sugar, stick to bananas and mangoes. Dragon fruit delivers a refined refreshment.

You will see my dragon fruit again. And I expect this time, you’ll know how to respond—not just to me, but to anyone who proudly offers you the produce of their yard. You might not know all that went into it. If you must decline, ​​do so with appreciation and grace. Because soon, there will be new buds on my dragon fruit plant. In a few weeks, I’ll be out there with newspaper and twist ties. And a few weeks after that, I will offer you my dragon fruit. ​​This time, don’t diss it.

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Mari Taketa is the dining editor of HONOLULU Magazine and editor of Frolic Hawai‘i.