Plant · P-1146

Texas Prickly Pear

Opuntia engelmannii

Texas Prickly Pear is a spined pad cactus that gives two harvests off the same plant: the flat green pads, sliced or diced like green beans once the spines are scraped off, and the purple-red fruit that follows, eaten raw, juiced, or boiled down into a sweet syrup. Ranchers singe the spines off whole pads to feed cattle and goats through drought, and a hedge of it grows into a genuinely stock-proof barrier over a few years. The real hazard is not the spines but the fine barbed hairs dusting every pad - nearly invisible, painful to brush against, and hard to pick back out - so pads and fruit are always handled with tongs or thick gloves. It thrives on neglect in poor, sandy or rocky ground and cannot tolerate wet feet, but any pad that falls off and touches soil will root and start a new plant.