Texas Gardening: Texas Native Plant Pictures ( Cacti & Desert ), 1 by htop

htop wrote:
Delicate Prickly Pear, Plains Prickly Pear, Starvation Prickly Pear, Twist-Spine Prickly Pear, Tuberous-R (Opuntia macrorhiza), Cactaceae Family, native, blooms in May through June, edible fruit and pads

Plains prickly pear is found on native prairie and pasture lands and on rocky hillsides. It is up to 12 inches tall and up to 18 inches wide and has tuberous roots as opposed to the fibrous roots. Each pad has 1-6 spines per areole. The spines are up to 2 inches long, un-barbed, and straight or sometimes twisted. Sometimes the spines occur on just the upper areoles and those along the pad margins. The 2-3 inches blooms are yellow or copper colored with centers that are sometimes red and they have numerous stamens with yellow or reddish filaments. The fruit are 1-3 inches long. During periods of food shortage, Native Americans ate its fruit either raw or stewed. It has no forage value, but has been used as an emergency livestock feed after the spines have been burned off. Deer, jackrabbits and turtles eat the fruits and help spread the seeds. This would be a great plant for rock gardens, wildscapes and xeriscapes. Because it does not grow as large as many other types of prickly pears, it is suitable for containers.

For more information, see its entry in the PlantFiles:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/85449/index.html

The fruit beginning to form ...