The flower stalk is sweet-tasting before it produces flower pods/flowers. Roast or pickle it before the pods appear. As the flower pods mature the stalk becomes tasteless and tough. After the flowers have past the ripe fruit of the thick-leaf …
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During most of the year the spiny, leafless ocotillo are often mistaken for a tall (up to twenty feet!), thin cacti. However, soon after a good rain small, rounded leaves appear though they don’t last long. Once things return to a more arid …
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Before doing anything with the pads or fruit you must remove their tiny, almost invisible needles called glochids. Use a barbecue tongs to harvest the pads/fruit and then burn off the glochids with a torch or gas stovetop.
The pads can be …
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Hiding low in the grasslands of the southwestern counties of Texas as well as randomly in other arid prairie locations, Horse Crippler Cactus is a boobytrap waiting to puncture the foot of the unwary. This low, dome-shaped cactus grows only …
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Closely related to prickly pears, cow’s tongue cacti pads and fruit can be used in the same manner as other Opuntia species. The pads can be peeled then sliced and cooked like green beans though much slimier. The peeled pads can also be sprinkled …
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The many-trunked limbs, each about 1.5″ in diameter and covered in many ~0.5″ spines, of tree cholla dot the hillsides of the southwestern Texas Chihuahuan desert. These common cacti can grow to eight feet tall and in the spring there purple …
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Cholla Pencil cactus first appear in the drier areas of east Texas and becomes more and more common as you head west. This cactus is easily recognized by it’s long, thin, multi-branched stems intersected by small, red, thorny, tasty fruit. …
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Looking like a cross between a cactus and a squid, slow-growing agave plants are found wild the arid Southwest but also as a decorative landscaping plant all over Texas and the South. Mature agave can stretch up to 16’ across and send flower …
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