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Opuntia
Also called Prickly Pears, Prickly Pear, Prickly Pear Cactus, Cholla, Desert Pears, Devil's Tongues, Prickly Pear Cactuses
Opuntia is a genus of cacti, commonly called prickly pears, with many species grown for their edible fruit (tuna) and pads (nopales) and as ornamentals. Grow them in full sun, in fast-draining soil, and water sparingly.
Opuntia, commonly called the prickly pear cactus, is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae, many known for their flavorful fruit and showy flowers. Between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago, the Opuntia prickly pear cactus was domesticated in central Mexico. Cacti are native to the Americas, and are well adapted to arid climates; however, they are still vulnerable to alterations in precipitation and temperature driven by climate change. The plant has been introduced to Australia, southern Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.
Prickly pear alone is also used to refer to the fruit, but may also be used for the plant itself; in addition, other names given to the plant and its specific parts include tuna (fruit), sabra, sabbar, nopal (pads, plural nopales, from the Nahuatl word nōpalli), nostle (fruit) from the Nahuatl word nōchtli, and paddle cactus.
Although the plants are edible, the pointed hairs should not be eaten, and similar species with milky sap are suspect.
Like most true cactus species, prickly pears are native only to the Americas. Through human action, they have since been introduced to many other areas of the world. Prickly pear species are found in abundance in Mexico, especially in the central and western regions, and in the Caribbean islands (West Indies). In the United States, prickly pears are native to many areas of the arid, semi-arid, and drought-prone Western and South Central United States, including the lower elevations of the Rocky Mountains and southern Great Plains, where species such as O. phaeacantha and O. polyacantha have become dominant, and to the desert Southwest, where several types are endemic. Prickly pear cactus is also native to sandy coastal beach scrub environments of the East Coast from Florida to southern Connecticut, where O. humifusa, O. stricta, and O. pusilla, are found from the East Coast south into the Caribbean and the Bahamas. Additionally, the eastern prickly pear is native to the midwestern "sand prairies" near major river systems, such as the Mississippi, Illinois, and Ohio rivers.
Chenille pricklypear · Cochineal nopal cactus · Erect pricklypear · Cactus apple · Barbary fig · Opuntia huajuapensis · Devil's-tongue · Opuntia lagunae · Coastal pricklypear · Purple pricklypear · Twistspine pricklypear · Opuntia matudae
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Opuntia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
