It began innocently enough. While trail running at the El Modena Open Space in Orange a few years ago, I lost my balance and threw out my arms for stability. That’s when I backhanded a coastal prickly ...

Prickly pear fruit is edible, and tasty at that! However, it's covered in dangerous spines, so you need to know the ...

Don’t let the spines of nopales intimidate you. Try these steps to peel and cook them. If your heritage is Mexican, you already know about nopales - the pads of opuntia ficus-indica, the prickly pear ...

Prickly pear fruit (and pads) is just one of many wild desert foods long used by Indigenous people. If you are harvesting prickly pear fruit this year, do so with respect, leaving fruit on the cactus ...

I didn't want to be a plant snob. So I told myself I at least appreciated some merits of the homely cactus. The prickly pear, after all, is a role model for water conservation. The flowers are pretty ...

In the name of good health and a good read, each week we’ll be bringing you a health product, complete with review. We’re calling this feature Crunchy Granola — even though we doubt much of this stuff ...

What it is: Prickly pear cactus pads, also known as nopales (singular: nopal), are commonly consumed as a vegetable in Mexico and Central America. The cactus pads—the flat “paddles” that grow from the ...

The jumping cholla cactus’ innocuous, shrub-like appearance belies its prickly spines’ strength: As a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals, a single cholla spine embedded ...

Summer is a good time to reflect on one of our common West Texas native plants, the prickly pear cactus. The name cactus is derived from the Greek word kaktos, which means “prickly plant.” Like all ...