Physical Graffiti

Paul Thomson, the self-taught horticulturist who co-founded the California Rare Fruit Growers, bred and selected this hybrid in San Diego County in the early 1980s, and four decades later it is still the most widely planted pitahaya in Southern California. It is generally reported as a Hylocereus guatemalensis by H. undatus cross; Spicy Exotics believes it to be Thomson's seedling 1-S, from Rixford crossed with Neitzel. In UC Cooperative Extension's twenty-cultivar trial it scored highest of all entries in taste evaluation and earned an excellent commercial rating. The catch is that it is self-sterile — it throws prodigious numbers of enormous night flowers but needs pollen from a different cultivar, usually applied by hand, to set them. Growers routinely pair it with a self-fertile partner such as Natural Mystic or Sugar Dragon purely as a pollen source.