Prickly Pears

The Prickly Pear cactus (Opuntia) fruits are ripening right now. The fruits are edible and you can find many recipes for preparing them. They can be eaten raw and also made into jelliies and drinks. The pads are also edible and can be purchased at local grocery stores as nopales.

The prickly pear are also known as nopales or paddle cactus and there are 200 species in the genus, distributed throughout most of the Americas. They are native to the New World but have been distributed throughout the world.

We have many on our property, although I would not say they are so widespread as to be a problem. They are indicators of land which has been over-grazed, becoming more frequent as grass is grazed away, so they may be a sign of damage done to our land before we bought it. Although there are cattle grazing on our land, they are very few and not confined to only our property, and are definitely not over-grazing at this point.

We've taken a few out, by digging them out, but you have to be careful to remove all the plant material. If a pad lays on bare soil, it will root and a new plant will grow. They grow in clumps, usually only a foot tall and a foot in diameter, but some are larger: three feet tall and three or four feet in diameter.

I'm not sure exactly what species we have. The Wildflower Center lists two for our area and we probably have both: the Plains Prickly Pear (Opuntia polyacantha) and the Tulip Prickly Pear (Opuntia phaecantha).

They have beautiful, large blooms, which are about 3 inches in diameter and usually yellow. The cactus bloom right after a good rainfall. In this photo you can see a fully-opened flower and two others which are not yet open.

Some of the cactus have red in the flowers as you can see in this photo. You can also see the green, unripened fruit just below the spent flowers on the left.

Here's a photo of a large plant with many fruits. The photo was taken today, just outside of the fence around our house. The fruit turn a deep red, almost purple color, when ripe.

Finally, this photo, taken at the San Marcos Nature Center, was in the Naturescapes Exhibition in 2009. I like the clean, smooth curves of the pads and the texture provided by the short, almost knobby needle clusters.