A question for Kactusking

Well I think my message was erased during the post purging. Just as well because it belongs here anyway.

As I was posting, do you eat cacti where you come from?

It's not a question from the bizarro world because here in Southern California we're blessed with the rich food culture of Mexican food. Once you get beyond Taco Bell and El Torrito, of my favorite foods is beef steak and nopales.

I think that nopales are the peeled and steamed leaves from the prickly pear cactus. The fruit also makes a unique and wonderful syrup.

Paging Dr. King. Paging Dr. King.

Jeff,

Sorry to be so tardy in posting a response. Actually, I did post a reply to your other post (which of course was deleted en mass with all the rest of the items that night). One of several of my unconventional hobbies is cacti and succulents. My wife and I are both from Abilene, TX which is semi-desert. While we lived in San Antonio, I became interested in these plants through a friend, and have developed a small but very select collection. I actually wild collected several specimens of Adenium multiflorum (aka Impala Lily) in northern Mozambique when I was on safari with my father in 1996. One of these weighs over 100 pounds bare rooted, with a base over 1.5 feet in diameter! Fairly non descript in the summer, in the winter they lose all of their leaves, and for four months put out close to 500 star shaped flowers with a crimson border. Quite a site! The plants have done okay here in the swamp, but I am really pushing for a radiology residency in either San Antonio or Dallas because we want to get back close to home, and of course so my plants will be happy! Another hobby- giant parafoil kites that can lift people. But that's another story!

John

Jeff,

I have not actually tried prickly pear pads or fruit, although I have tried jelly made from the fruit, or "tunas", as they are called. I have tried some other fruits. The best by far is Echinocerous straminious (strawberry cactus). They are mound-forming plants which put out a 2 inch diameter red fruit which tastes like a cross between strawberry and kiwi. They could be marketed (they are that good) if someone could figure out a way to harvest them.