The journey from Shanghai to Katmandu in 1991 marked the beginning of a botanical revelation that Xia and I would come to consider our most exciting and mysterious: An evergreen clade of fruit-bearing vines endemic to cool shaded forests at 3,000-6,000 feet elevation.
Kadsura or Dragon™ Vines can climb 40 feet into the forest canopy and produce heavy crops of berry-flavored fruit as large as cantaloupes. Snow is frequent in many of these ranges. Some Fruiting Dragon™ Vines , especially Dragon ™ Kadsura named Firecracker ™ and “Red Runner ™” would be especially useful in vast regions of the eastern and the southern US, Chile, or New Zealand.
I trialed this in my Oregon garden and brought cuttings to California. I published photos of Kadsura heteroclita and Kadsura coccinea and two other unnamed Kadsura species and gave them to horticultural experts. It soon became apparent some species of Kadsura, Fruiting Dragon ™ Vines, had never been properly photographed or documented as fruit-bearing garden specimens.