Photo Essay
Prickly Pear - the most ubiquitous desert plant in North America
Prickly pear is a common sight in West Texas. The Comanche Prickly Pear, a small variety with red blossoms, was originally the only subspecies found on the Llano Estacado. It always grows flat on the ground and is usually hidden by grass (except during droughts.) In the 1930’s drought cattle were driven from pastures far to the south, where the Big Pad Prickly Pear is native. Trucks carried the pads to the nightly bedding grounds of the cattle, where the spines were burned off with flamethrowers and the pads then fed to the cattle. A number of pastures are now completely overgrown with this variety. (Their presence allowed the northward expansion of javelinas, which are very fond of the pads despite the spines.)
In towns in the region, people grow two cultivars; "mother-in-law tongue’ or “beavertail,” that becomes arboreal and grows to 10 feet tall or more, and “nopalitos,” a variety without spines developed so that the fresh young pads can be made into nopalitos (slices of the pads pickled) which are added to huevos rancheros, salads, and stews.
Click on each image to see a larger version; use your browser's "Back" button to return to this page.
Big Pad prickly pear often reaches 5-6 feet tall and 10-15 feet across. It takes 15-20 years to reach such a size. Most live 20 years or less. Disease, insects, and freezes will eventually "melt" the specimen, leaving behind a pile of detritus.
Mother-in-law tongue prickly pear can be pruned to make it even more tree-form - the original pads become like trunks.
The pads of the variety swoop in every direction, and if left unpruned, will pull portions of the cactus flat to the ground.
In the low light of evening the thornless nopalito pads seem to be soft and smooth.
In April the buds of the blossoms begin to swell. In 2007 an early April snowstorm discolored the flesh of the the pads.
It takes up to two weeks for the buds to grow to a stage before they bloom.
On the buds are the tiny "leaves" of prickly pear -small green arcs that fall off in due time.
Big pad prickly pear has a yellow blossom which becomes closer to orange before the petals fall.
The thornless nopalito also has yellow blossoms. The petals wither to orange also, and after the petals fall, the top of the new "tuna" (the fruit) is white.
Comanche prickly pear blooms start out red.
These are the true leaves of the nopalito.
When big pad prickly pears start to send up bloom buds, it first appears as a whorl of leaves.
The same cactus a few days later, but with a dusting of ice pellets from a late spring storm.
In late May and early June, as the cacti blooms, the leaves detach. Some were caught on this pad by a sticky spider "drag-line."
Nopalito will sometimes retain its fruit until Christmas.
Big pad tunas are ripest in late August and September, and then begin to loose moisture if birds do not eat them all.
Botanists that specialize in cactus revise their nomenclature every decade or two. Researchers will look at spine color, bloom color, and growth habit to attempt to classify the different varieties. The spines can be very variable - white, red, gray, yellow, two-toned, many spined, or few spined.
Ice storms accentuate the spines with the accumulation of ice.
Look closely at the skin of the pad - it has faint skim of frost.
A half-grown big-pad pad has its spines closer together than when it is full-sized.'
Around some spines disease or fungi cause a circular depression.
This cactus, with mostly red spines, also had a pad with white spines, which appeared blue in early morning light.
When a person lives with a prickly pear, the eye can be drawn to it for many reasons - including to the patterns of the shadows of spines.
This pad, discolored by frost, has reddish spines. Notice the glochids - the cluster of tiny spines around the base of larger spines. The glochids impart misery to those unlucky enough to run into members of the genus Opuntia (to which prickly pear belongs.)
Prickly pear are utilized by a number of birds for their fruit. Mockingbirds and Curvebilled thrashers will often have purple heads from the juice of the tunas. Some birds use the pads to build nests.
Mourning doves will begin nesting in March. This one has ice pellets on its back.
Cactus Wrens sometimes place their nests in prickly pear. They inspect every cactus in their range for insects every day.
A walking stick had climbed a cactus, and as the photographer snapped shots of it, a digger bee dropped down out of the sky to land on the blossom.
Walking sticks eat plant leaves - but probably not the skin of a pad of a prickly pear.
Black widows often spin webs in prickly pear. This black widow's web has a fly wrapped up in it.
The top of this new tuna has had something eating away on the flesh - but what?
Leaf-footed bugs are regularly found on prickly pear. When the cactus blooms, the species is still immature, and the "leaf-foot" is not fully developed. On the lower portion of the adult's hind leg a large flattened area eventually forms.
At times dozens of leaf-footed bugs will congregrate on one prickly pear, even while the species is in the immature stage.
In one blossom of a nopalito, five bees buzzed busily.
This swallowtail butterfly died on the prickly pear, but was not impaled on a spine.
Inside the blossom of a prickly pear, a tiny fly waited - it probably is a parasite on some insect that visits cactus blossoms.
Prickly pear offer great protection to rodents. Packrats often build their nest at the base of one. When nothing else is available to eat, they will gnaw on the pads, but if no other supplemental items are in their diet, they will eventually die.
The "sign" of prickly pear gnawing is obvious.
In this almost dead prickly pear the trail of the packrat passes under a pad.
Packrats rely on prickly pear during bad weather, but roam further from their nest under the prickly pear after the cold passes.
Seedling prickly pears start out as cylinders, and then grow the first pad.
Dead prickly pear "melt." All that is left is skin and the network of the veins within. Termites and other decomposers reduce even that after another 3-5 years.
The circular shape is what is left of a spine base.
The discolorations of frost and disease and misshapen growth patterns created this "face" a photographer noted.
The skin eventually becomes white.
The skin slowly wrinkles as it dries.
After a rains storm, some pads will hold the rainwater until it evaporates.