beehive cactus

Photo: Stan Shebs — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Small greenish fruit, edible but minor — grown mainly for the pink flowers rather than for the fruit.

Hardiness

Zone 3–8

Habit

Groundcover

Edible part

Flower, Fruit

Ripens

Late summer–autumn

Mature size

Solitary or in small clumps, 5–15 cm tall; excellent in containers

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.5–8.0 (neutral–alkaline, sharp drainage)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Widespread in western North America — from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba south through the Great Plains, Great Basin and Rockies to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico, west to south-eastern Oregon and California and east to an outlying population in Minnesota, on dry grassland, rocky slopes and pinyon-juniper country.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

Very slow

Spacing

30 cm (12 in) apart — about 11 per m² (10 per 10 sq ft)

Leaf shape

No leaves. A small solitary or clustering globe covered in tubercles, each tipped with a radiating star of spines — and no glochids, which are confined to the Opuntia group.

Root system

A short thickened taproot with fine fibrous laterals, sitting shallow in rocky ground. The taproot is what carries it through drought, and also what rots first if the plant sits wet.

Fruit description

Small fleshy green to brownish fruit 1–2 cm long, ripening after the pink to magenta flowers and remaining on the plant. Edible and mild, with a faintly sweet, slightly mucilaginous flesh — worth trying, not worth planting for.

Propagation

Seed is the usual route and is slow; offsets can be detached from clustering forms and callused before potting. Rarely worth moving once established.

Pollination

Bee-pollinated

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.