Tasting Hardy Prickly Pear Cactus Fruits (Opuntia phaeacantha “Orange Form”)

I was out in the garden today and I spied some fruits on these hardy prickly pears.

I bought a plant a couple of years ago from Mahoney’s Garden Center and put it in a pot in a south-facing spot near my chimney. Through benign neglect, it has escaped its container and colonized the dry sandy soil along the pathway. Though this species is native to the southwestern US, it seems to be very hardy and has made it through two winters here in zone 5b with no problems. However, they do get very shriveled and dead looking when it's cold.

 This form has nice showy orange flowers in the early summer, and then makes these fruits.  These fruits are pretty small. I attribute part of the small size to the fact that I didn’t water these at all for the entire summer, and they were in pots! Did I mention they are indestructible?!

The fruits are not very thorny. You have to watch out for the glochids (those little, fine, hair-like thorns that sprout from the spots on the fruit). I brushed them off with a paper towel, but I missed two of them and they stuck in my hand. OW! I read somewhere that you should use tongs to handle them, but I guess I am the foolhardy type.

I thought I would try seeing how these tasted, since this was the first year they fruited for me.  They have been ripe for a while, but I was too busy to notice them.

I cut them open and found they were full of seeds and pulp, just like the “tunas” at the supermarket but smaller. The pulp is sweet, but it was very gluey (mucilaginous). You can see how sticky the seeds were from this photo:

Perhaps they would be better if I had harvested them more promptly and given them better growing conditions. I will try again next year!

I’m going to plant the seeds in pots and grow them indoors for fun.

Grow Wild,

Susan