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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/jaymicafella on 2024-11-30 05:19:55+00:00.
Dragonfruit. A fruit that people either love or are indifferent towards. For most, their experience of this tropical fruit comes from those purchased in stores. They would walk past, see a crate of this unusual looking fruit and decide “Stuff it, ill give this a try”. They’d brave the hefty price tag, and take it home to be eaten as a cool refreshing desert after dinner.
“It’s not cheap, so it must be good,” they’d think as they move aside the familiar bar of chocolate and grab the chilled dragonfruit.
Anticipation drips from their tongue as they slice it up. Wonder fills their eyes as they gaze at the alien looking flesh, either red or white with freckles of tiny black seeds. They’d take a bite, expecting an explosion of flavor to fill their mouth.
Instead, disappointment. While not exactly having an unpleasant taste, the little flavor that their taste buds can grapple is swiftly drowned out by the flavorless juice that is abundant. Regret takes hold. Never again would they blow their money on such an expensive, bland and unsatisfying fruit.
That is the experience of the unfortunate majority who are oblivious to the extensive catalogue of delicious tasting dragonfruit that exist outside of the supermarkets. Supermarket bought fruits are picked weeks before they could reach their full flavor potential. But when you grow your own, like myself, they can be harvested at the optimal ripeness, chilled and eaten in the same day.
After trying one of my close friends home grown fruit, I was blown away with the rich flavor and thus entered the delicious world of dragonfruit. In hindsight I wish I had spat it out and vowed never to eat another dragonfruit again; the world would have been thankful if I had.
At first I grew out my own white flesh plant, this being the most common variety available. I was swiftly hooked after trying my first fruit and in the matter of two seasons, I went from obsessed to addicted. My collection grew from that first white fleshed to over eighty different varieties, each with their own unique exquisite flavor.
Most of my plants were grown from cuttings purchased from other enthusiastic growers, but some were hybrids of my own.
You see, the deeper I delved into the world of dragonfruit, I learned just how easy it was to create your own variety. All you had to do was cross pollinate two different varieties, let the resulting fruit ripen, harvest and set aside some of the seeds, plant them and watch them grow. It fascinated me how each individual seedling took on different traits of their parent plants. Sometimes it was almost impossible to believe that two mature plants that had been grown from this method were even siblings.
My addiction to hybridization saw new gene pools develop and after the fifth generation of some of these initial pairings, I had plants and fruit that had never before been seen in the dragonfruit community.
It was the closest I could possibly have felt to being like God, creating whole new strains that otherwise would never have existed if I had not forced natures hand. It had been a euphoric experience.
That was, until I bred BD-6-1.
It was the first plant that had grown out of a batch of sixth generation seedlings that originated from the infamous “Black Dragon” variety. The goal of this line of hybrids was not to make a new exotic tasting fruit, but rather to create the first “purely red branched” dragonfruit plant, and possibly one of the first predominately red cacti. The idea had fascinated me ever since I began my hybridizing obsession. I chose to use the “black dragon” variety due to it already containing a faint red hue in what should otherwise have been glossy green branches.
“Black dragon” is naturally quite a spiky plant, far more than other dragonfruit varieties. But with each subsequent generation of my hybridization, the spikes only grew longer and fiercer. The first sign that told me BD-6-1 was going to be quite a difficult plant was when the first syringe-like spikes began to form when it was little more than a seedling. In place of what should have been fine white hairs that was the norm of dragonfruit seedlings, these syringes jutted out at almost three times the length of the tiny red seedling itself! If I had not been observing its growth every day and had walked in at this present stage of growth, I would have thought someone stuck these spikes in as a mock pin cushion.
It was unlike anything I could have possibly imagined. The larger this seedling got, the more I could imagine such a plant appearing in the Garden of Satan itself. It was a devilish looking thing. Within a week of its emergence, I could already tell that this hybrid was to be a rapid grower, for it was three times larger than its sibling counterparts which were only barely protruding from the soil.
Despite the dangerously sharp spikes in which I handled with the upmost delicacy not only for the plant’s wellbeing but my own, you could imagine just how much it stole my attention. Its sibling seedlings showed nothing unusual, so I swiftly discarded them in favor of this one. As it grew taller and drew closer to the stage where it could be planted outside, looking more like its final form, the red colour of its branches was the most predominant I had ever seen, adding much more giddiness to my excitement that I was one step closer to finally breeding the first fully red branched dragonfruit plant. Only the faintest hue of green was evident.
Two weeks after the seedling emerged, its roots were completely pot bound and already starting to worm their way out of the small drainage holes. At this point, the plant had fattened out considerably and was about 30cm tall. Its appearance replicated that of a 6-month-old plant. The speed in which this thing was growing was out of this world!
Excited that I might actually get a taste of its fruit within the current season, I built a 6 foot trellis just outside of my existing dragonfruit orchard and prepared the ground with a well-draining soil. For those who are unaware, dragonfruit plants are actually a vine like plant, naturally growing up established trees in the south American rainforests. The point of a trellis is to replicate this natural habitat as much as possible.
I was very aware of the syringes and what damage they might be able to cause, so I made sure I wore thick gardening gloves. In hindsight, I should have just snipped a section of those spikes off, just enough so that I could wrap a gloved hand around the trunk unhindered. But I was too keen a hybridizer, and refused to compromise the full potential of the plant for any means.
And so it was, how I managed to prick my finger with one of those spikes. It happened just as I placed it in its final position. At the time I thought nothing of it - getting pricked by less pointy dragonfruit spikes was nothing new to me- so I finished the job with half a mind to the throbbing in my right index finger.
I treated the tiny pinhole wound as I did with any other splinter: a wash with disinfectant liquid, a dab of antiseptic cream, and a band aid wrapped around for good measure. By the second day the pain was gone and by the fourth I had seized dressing it.
For the next three days, I monitored in awe as the devilish looking BD-6-1 continued its unnaturally rapid growth towards the top of the trellis. Obviously, I had other duties which called for my attention, so I was not constantly sitting there watching it. But every time I came back to it, I could tell that the plant had grown some more.
On a few occasions I had even gone so far as to placing a small mark a few centimeters above the tip of the plant, and sat for an extended period of time as I watched the tip slowly reach the mark. It moved almost at the same pace as the hour hand on an analog clock. My confidence in tasting its first fruits only intensified.
By the seventh day after planting outside, it had reached the top of the 6 foot trellis. At this point, as is common practice in dragon fruit growing, the tip would be trained to grow over the trellis where it would begin to hang over and continue growing back towards the earth. Branches would subsequently be produced at the bend in the vine and thus the scaffolds of the final form of the plant would begin to establish themselves.
The eighth day was when things started to go south.
It began when I awoke in the morning and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Being a habit built in since childhood, I performed it with robotic precision as most of us do. But as I began to brush from side to side, something seemed off. I continued the motion, trying to get my head around what was so different. It was at the edge of my peripheral vision. I looked into the mirror and nearly spat all my toothpaste out.
Wrapped around my blue toothbrush, was a faintly green index finger.
I immediately cleared my mouth and turned on the bright overhead heat lights in order to make sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me. Sure enough, my right index finger had a green hue to it. It stood out like a pink panther next to the rest of the sun-tanned fingers on the same hand. I spun it around, my jaw slack. It was the same finger that I had pricked when I planted BD-6-1 outside a week ago.
Being a greenish colour was one thing, the other being the distinct line where the green skin merged with the natural colored skin just above the main joint of the finger. It loo...
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