Edible Stems & Fruits of the Cactaceae

The fresh, many-seeded fruit is called "cactus apple" or "tuna," and it is eaten raw or made into drinks. One must be very careful when preparing the fruits because of minute, hair-like spines called glochids. The painful glochids can be removed from the fruits by scraping or singeing them with a flame, or by washing them thoroughly in a tub with a high pressure nozzle. Generally the ends of the fruits are severed transversely, and then the fruits are cut open lengthwise and the contents removed from the skin.

During the 1700s and 1800s in California this cactus was planted near the Spanish missions and on the large Spanish ranchos. In addition to the cooked stems and sweet fruits, the cactus pads were used as a source of mucilaginous binding material for adobe bricks for the mission buildings. Over the centuries, this species has spread and cross pollinated with many native species of prickly pears, resulting in numerous intermediate forms (called hybrid swarms) throughout its range. In fact, some of the massive, thicket-forming, hybrid clones can even survive chaparral and grass fires in southern California, by regenerating from live stems in the center of the thickets where the fire is unable to penetrate. This complex species and its various cultivars and hybrids now grow throughout temperate and tropical regions of the world.