Photo: YG01 — CC BY 4.0 · source
Survives zone 8 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
This is the prickly pear of commerce worldwide — domesticated in central Mexico and grown at agricultural scale for its tuna fruit and nopales pads across Mexico, Sicily, other Mediterranean regions, and North Africa, with a culinary tradition going back centuries. ⚠ Glochids — both fruit skin and pads are covered in glochids that must be scraped or singed off before eating.
Spread warning. Naturalized and locally invasive outside its native range, notably in South Africa (an estimated ~830,000 ha infested, up from ~400 ha in the 1890s) and Australia, where it is classed as a landscape-transforming weed and targeted for control.
- Hardiness
- Zone 8–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Seed, Fruit
- Ripens
- Late summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Tree-like cactus 3–5 m tall with a woody trunk — much the largest here, and not a container plant once grown
- Light
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.5–8.0 (neutral–alkaline, sharp drainage)
- Environment
- Arid
- Native range
- Center of domestication in central Mexico; long cultivated and now naturalized across the Mediterranean, North Africa, southern Africa, Australia, and other warm regions worldwide.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Moderate to fast for a cactus — 30–60 cm of new pad growth a season in warmth
- Spacing
- 200 cm (79 in) apart — about 4 m² (43 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Large, thick, flattened oval pads (cladodes), fresh green, that also serve as the harvested "nopal" vegetable when young and tender.
- Root system
- Shallow, wide-spreading roots typical of the genus, adapted to quickly absorb infrequent rainfall.
- Fruit description
- The classic "tuna" — a sweet, seedy fruit, green to yellow, orange, red, or purple depending on cultivar, with glochid-covered skin that must be removed before eating.
- Propagation
- Propagated almost entirely from pad (cladode) cuttings — a mature pad is cut, allowed to callus for several days to a week, then set upright in gritty soil, typically rooting within 2–4 weeks; seed propagation is used mainly for breeding, not standard cultivation.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile
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.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Tolerates poor, rocky soil and needs minimal feeding once established, though commercial orchards apply modest amounts of compost or low-nitrogen fertilizer to boost fruit yield; the main requirement is fast drainage.
How it spreads. Becomes a large, multi-branched, eventually tree-like shrub with a thick woody trunk at the base as it ages.
Growing tips. Fast-growing for a cactus; needs full sun and sharp drainage. Frost-tender relative to hardy eastern Opuntia — sustained hard freezes can damage or kill it, so it is best suited to mild-winter or Mediterranean-type climates. Columbus is credited with introducing it to Spain in 1493, from where it spread through the Mediterranean and North Africa.
Grow journal
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