Yes, Pine Island Nursery is in Florida and that is why It cost me sooooo much to get it shipped to me here in Southern California. The shipping was super expensive and I also had to pay for the phytosanctatory certificate where the agriculture department (I think) checks out the plants to make sure it doesn't have any diseases or insects. The plants also had to be heat treated before they came to SoCal.
The taste of dragonfruit really depends on where you got your fruit and what variety you have. Most of the supermarket Dragonfruit is the white variety that doesn't have very much flavor and is also picked too Underripe (In my opinion). These fruits taste somewhat bland, kind of a cross between cucumber ( the cooling effect) and a bland watermelon. For these type of fruit, I recommend chilling the fruit and squeezing some lemon juice on it before eating.
Now, if you were to grow your own fruit or were able to get a hold of a good red variety that was picked near the peak, it is one of the most wonderful fruits you have ever tasted. Dragonfruit as a whole might be considered bland when compared to things like Mangoes, passionfuit, cherimoyas, ect... but to me (my favorite is the red inside type dragonfruit) a ripe red dragonfruit is a special gift from Mother Nature. The (inside) red type dragonfruit has a hint of berry or citrus flavor that works perfectly with the sweet flesh and crunchy texture of the seeds. The dragonfruit is so good that I can eat so many of them and the only thing that stops me from overindulging is the price of the fruit.
I came about dragonfruit on a visit to Hong Kong (where dragonfruit is extremely cheap!) where I was visiting some of my old and diabetic grandparents. While at one of my relatives houses, I was offered some white dragonfruit and instantly fell in love. I was told that the older people in Hong Kong (and I assume other asian countries) ate a lot of dragonfruit because it helped with digestion and was easy for elderly people with no teeth to eat. It was considered a medicinal plant and my grandmother often ate a dragonfruit in place of a normal meal.
I am still relatively young but I eat a horrible diet of fast food for breakfast, lunch and dinner (I hate cooking) but I was easily able to wolf down loads of dragonfruit and I use it to clear out my gut. I eat so much meat and tend to stay away from veggies. I like to eat sweet fruits like mangoes, lychees, cherimoyas, ect and was super happy to find out that dragonfruit has a very good amount of fiber and the red varieties also have lots of lycopene. The fiber and lycopene is likely the reason why dragonfruit is considered very healthy for elderly and young alike.
Now that my own parents are very old and starting to develope health problems, I hope I can do some research and (I am a biologist/researcher) better understand how to grow dragonfruit to produce higher yields in a small space. My plants are doing great right now but some plants get burnt by intense summer sunlight and trellising the plants can become difficult, I'm currently testing several methods such as growing up a tree, the dragonfruit tree method (which they use at dragonfruit farms) and scaffold trellising.
