I made a Frankenstein dragon fruit plant…

[stevieklaer]

It’s insane that plants are just like “yea alright” and continue to grow together

[SaeSaeyoungyoung]

My dad is an agricultural engineer. I didn't take after him, I'm studying med because I never liked plants. But when i was in high school I remember he explained this to me with such passion that I still remember it. My dad's a nerd for plants and i love it.

[Brain_quench]

Now when your dragonfruits become sentient and start making you guys swap arms and legs, I don't want to hear any complaints because we told you so.

[kamisama]

"DONT LOOK AT ME, IM A MONSTER!!!"

[felinor]

Instructions unclear, i now have rock people after me

[PlushieMarioMadness]

Plants are insane. They’re just like.” so we’re just roommates now, ok this is fine” and they just continue growing😂

[GothAtheist]

The real question is, what is the actual viability of the Frankenstein plant? I imagine you'd probably wanna do this at the top of the trellis, so that the resulting canopy is the different varieties?

[benthatbirdo]

He grafted on a dragon fruit stem head and said "BEAR WITNESS!"

[Abrogator]

Instructions unclear. Still waiting for my roommate's arm to fuse to my back.

[MarcelKędziora-wr]

Instructions unclear, i am now sailing across the seas

[theflamingarrowgaming]

“Lowly tarnished. Thou are unfit to even graft.”

[allohtoffbaqphat]

3 weeks later: "It was a massive failure. The plant grew into an actual, angry dragon. We should have never played god."

[DARKONE]

Thanks for showing us the plant successfully bearing four different varieties of dragon fruits

[meganb]

Fun fact, grafting is reliant only on the two plants being grafted together. You may say "duh" but what I mean by this is imagine you have three fruits. Fruit A and B are compatible. So is B and C. However if you graft A and C together they will reject the graft. But if you use B inbetween them, you can have an A-B-C plant and all three parts will accept eachother. This way you can create mainly some incredible art pieces, or I guess get any fruit you want in a garden that can only fit one tree. Space limitations are actually a common reason for grafting two fruit producing plants together as two individual plants would have better yields than two grafts. Tomatoes and potatoes are a common type of graft like that. However even more common is a different type of grafting. Did you know that there are only few places in the world where the grapes you eat and drink can be grown? This is due to an invasive parasite from America that is very deadly to them. So why are there great vineyards all over Europe and even America? See the American grapes are really bad for food and wine because we didn't spend millennia selectively breeding them, but they are both resistant to this illness and compatible for grafting with their European cousins. And while the vine situation is an extreme, such connections are not exclusive to vines. If you have any fruit tree bought from a store there's a good chance it will have a small lump somewhere on the bottom of its trunk, that's a graft point. See even if the really tasty varieties of fruit are viable, they are bred for being tasty and having lots of fruits, they cannot compare with the varieties bred exclusively for being tough and sturdy, but they can cooperate with them. Of course you will still need to take gentle care of the fragile top plant that gives you fruits, but everything from the graft down is much better defended against the environment. However be careful, for you might need to defend against it! With some graft combinations the bottom and top plant may not be entirely compatible, and live more so in an uneasy alliance as they need eachother. But if the roots manage to sprout their own branches and leafs beneath the graft the bottom plant suddenly doesn't need the top, and it may cut it off from supplies. This is often mitigated by putting the graft as low as possible to dissuade the bottom plant from growing it's own leafs, and the issue is rare as many plants will tolerate eachother even if they both have leafs and roots. Especially within the same species connection rejection rate is basically 0 which allows people to do things such as weaving a fence of trees that has dozens of roots and crowns, but all the plants are connected together into one. It's a cool project honestly, and I might have some ideas of my own for ungodly floral amalgamations, shaped to my will.

I think I got a little carried away typing this out.

TLDR: There are incredible grafting options possible for plethora of reasons, and the Frankenstein dragon fruit is merely the tip of the iceberg.

[mikamasterfloof]

I took horticulture with planstmanship before covid for 2 years and this was arguably my favourite thing I got to do in person. Seeing the plants heal and then start to grow as one has to be the most amazing thing I’ve seen. It’s amazing how adaptable plants can be

[АронТебереков]

Lets be honest, he's just making a new lokakaka fruit

[Junie-ml]

The whole time i was like “that’s where dragon fruits come from??!!” 😂

[TheTechAdmin]

My grandmother would make THE MOST BEAUTIFUL plants and flowers by splicing them.
She told me her grandmother and mother showed her the best ways to splice. She would sometimes do up to FIVE splices.
I wish multimedia existed back then, the way it does today.
Too bad over 200 years of splicing was lost due to my mother's lack of interest in it.

I still remember visiting my grandmother's home as a child. The vegetation there was like visiting an alien planet.

[arcatia]

grafting is literally one of the most fun ways to propagate ever imo

[ZOCCOK]

Do this with animals, and suddenly you have the immune system launching tactical nukes 💀