American Beauty

American Beauty is a Hylocereus guatemalensis selection of unrecorded parentage that travelled from Guatemala to Florida and on into California, where UC Cooperative Extension included it in its twenty-cultivar San Diego pitahaya trial. It has become the standard recommendation for anyone with room for a single plant, because it is genuinely self-fertile and sets a full crop without a pollination partner. UC researchers rated its quality exceptional, recording 18.51 Brix and describing the pulp as very flavourful and very juicy. Spicy Exotics reports that DNA testing found it identical to the Vietnamese selection Bien Hoa Red, which produces slightly larger fruit from the same genetics. The trade-off is a thin rind and soft flesh that bruises easily, which keeps it out of long-distance commerce and squarely in the home-garden and local-market niche.