Rare Fruit: Santa Catalina Island Cactus Vs Spineless Cactus

in catalina •  7 years ago 


I want to demonstrate the difference in the way these cacti look like. One is thorny not pleasant to the eye but has the sweet tunas (pricky pear fruit) you can try. The other is your regular cactus found at stores and are good themselves but the pears do not compare to the cactus from Catalina Island. This variety is found only on Santa Catalina Island and is widespread. Some of the locals go cut off new shoots to eat and the tunas are also picked when ready.


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I love tunas! We call these kind of cacti "nopales" in México. It is a very typical food here, we harvest a piece of it, careful not to get pricked, we remove the thorns (which in some species are hard and sharp, and in others they are like tiny little hairs that stick to your fingers... Very hard to remove!) and then slice it to eat in salads.

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They are sliiiiimy and it is an acquired taste, but they are super healthy and abundant here...

And then, when the season comes, these sweet sweet prickly pears, which we call tunas, grow on them abundantly, and I eat like 20 a day... My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

I hope you took a piece of this cactus home to plant so that in a couple of years you can harvest your own tunas!

We eat them salted and fried, Nothing else added.