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Foraging & Eco Skills Edu @WaggleBee

Foraging Prickly Pear Nopales - Coming Soon!

Prickly Pear Types: ​⁠

Today, I’m presenting several Prickly Pear cacti you can meet in North America.

You’ll see the Brown-spined prickly pear, a common prickly pear especially in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan and other deserts across Arizona to Texas and even up and to Utah. It’s a spreading Cactus with not much of a trunk and not in clusters or tight mounds like the hedgehogs we've seen. Pads grow in chains and are typically about 5 inches in size. It also has juicy red to purple fruits or tunas as they’re called in some places!

You’ll meet the pancake prickly pear which grows up to around 7 feet tall. This guy is like a prickly pear tree with trunk and all!! You can find the pancake prickly pear all over the Southwest and it has orange or yellow flowers!

And did you know that Prickly Pear's aren't always characteristically green!? Some are a blue green but some are even purple! The Santa Rita Prickly Pear, named for the mountains where it's found, often has a purplish tinge and the discoloration is caused by a pigment known as betacyanin, a product the plant creates in response to stress is like cold or drought or a lack of water access. It has few to no spines.

And there are other spineless varieties, like the Blind Pear. Find out where it gets it name today & learn about a bunch of other prickly pears, many with edible fruits, as we explore Prickly Pears here!



References & Further Readings

Image Credits

Blind Pears, Opuntia & view of red glochids
By JMK

Blind Pear
By Amante Darmanin



#cactus #foraging #plants #desert #plants #vegan