Has anyone tried to grow one of the Epiphyllum (orchid cacti) for fruit?
I’ve read that the flavour of the berries does resemble dragon fruit for some species.
They say that E. anguliger (fish bone cactus) and E. guatemalensis (curly locks) are well tasting.
At this moment I grow one E. guatemalensis and have some seeds of E. phyllanthus that I’m planning to sow. Unfortunately my E. guatemalensis hasn’t flowered yet, so I can’t confirm any of the claims about its flavour.
in my humble opinion, compared to dragon fruit, epiphyllums have a much larger gene pool, so there’s potential for a superior tasting fruit. several years ago i tasted an epiphyllum fruit that was so good that i felt bad eating the seeds. so i reluctantly put the fruit down and extracted the remaining seeds, which i sowed.
right now i have a few seedlings pretty close to blooming size.
earlier this year i purchased 10 acres of old orange grove in central florida. visited a couple months ago for the 1st time and planted some seedlings of my fig hybrid (ficus opposita x carica) to test their resistance to rkn. also made a couple dozen epiphyte bundles that i attached to trees and sowed a bunch of epiphyllum seeds on. i plan to select for fruit quality.
Haven’t had one before, but now you got me interested! Most cacti fruit that I have all have a similar taste. So far the best I have had is Queen of the Night fruit (Selenicereus grandiflorus), which was sweeter than the different dragonfruits albeit alot smaller and spikey.
i have 4 one red one florescent blue red purple and one white . i didn’t think they fruited . im wondering if i can use their pollen to help my halley’s comet bloom…
What an amazing project! If I were to live in a similar climate or had a large greenhouse I would do something similar. That’s something that also came to my mind when I was watching a video of a large greenhouse once.
Do you know which species you tasted the fruit of by the way?