In today’s version of Side of the Road, we’re going to take a look at the flying dragon fruit, just in time for you to get some for yourself, since they are in season right now. I have marked some on the Food Map – they’re on Clairmont Rd, just south of Buford Hwy, where the following pictures were taken:
The flying dragon is by no means a pleasant fruit. The plant is covered in ferocious thorns which are not only long and sharp, but also incredibly sturdy. We were able to completely puncture wooden branches using the thorns, which suffered no damage in the process. So if the apocalypse happens tomorrow and we have to restart civilization from scratch, keep flying dragon in mind for making sewing needles. The plant gives the impression that it could survive a variety of end-of-the-world scenarios in order to provide high-quality pokey things for fledgling humanities.
The fruit is also pretty serious. It’s at least as sour as a lemon, but has a distinct pine taste to it as well. Sure, they’re not as easily appreciated as say, an apple, where you can just pick it off the branch and bite right in to it, but it would probably make a very refreshing lemonade, or add a very interesting taste when used in place of lemon juice in cooking.
And really, this is the only citrus fruit that grows well in Atlanta. Let’s have some love for this exotic marvel. After all, just look at what happened with a similar sour citrus fruit, the yuzu – it’s now the darling of la-dee-dah chefs the world over, is extremely expensive, and very difficult to obtain in the US.
If only there were some sort of saying about how to proceed in life when given sour citrus fruit.
Tags: flyingdragon, sideoftheroad
[...] family. I ended up finding a cool website called Concrete Jungle that gave me more info about the Flying Dragon. Concrete Jungle “…is a volunteer-run, Atlanta-based organization helping to distribute [...]