Full to part sun. Low water is required but watering these plants once or twice a month in the summer keeps plants healthy when the rain isn’t forthcoming. Keep plants dry in winter. Container plants, water once or twice a week in summer, and maybe lightly a few times in winter if there is no rain. Hardy to 0°F.

We recommend watering plants in the summer when there is drought to prevent rots. During droughts plants will have natural root dye-back, and this is normal. But during extended droughts like the two year drought of 2019-2020, plants had excessive root dye-back and when the rains finally came, many plants just rotted. Many people thought that the really wet summer is what rotted the cacti, but it was the response to copious moisture coming into contact with lots of dead roots, and those rots chased up into the plants.

Flowers are very important for native bee species, though numerous other pollinators use the flowers. The seeds of the dried fruits are eaten by birds and many other animals. Prickly pear plants provide important habitat for birds, native rodents like packrats, and numerous other animals. Larval host for the tineid moth Dyotopasta yumaella, the grass moth Dicymolomia opuntialis, the snout moth Laetilia dilatifasciella, and the grass moth Pseudoschinia elautalis.

The fruit is edible and is eaten fresh or dried, made into jams, jellies, juice and wine; pads are also edible and were prepared by roasting, boiling, or pulping and making into cakes; the seeds were ground into flour.

Opuntia is from Latin root puncti for prickled. The specific epithet means strong or robust, referring to the enormous pads. There are approximately 176 species currently accepted for the genus. Like most true cactus species, prickly pears are native only to the Americas. Through human action, they have since been introduced to many other areas of the world.

Native and endemic to central and northern Mexico to within 100 miles of the Arizona and New Mexico borders where it grow from 5,000 to 10,000’ on rocky slopes, open shrub lands, woodlands and mixed with other cactus and succulents.