Prickly pear, or cactus pear, is the bright-purple fruit of the opuntia cactus plant. Most people know of prickly pear margaritas, that fruity drink made at Mexican restaurants and tequila bars. But ...

My wife and I visited her cousin, Penny, a few weeks ago and were amazed at an enormous cactus she had in landscape. It was an eastern prickly pear cactus measuring about 100 square feet, loaded with ...

The desert prickly-pear, known to botanists as Opuntia phaeacantha, is the Southwest's most widespread and abundant species of cactus. Unlike the giant saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) that is restricted ...

Walnut Creek’s Ruth Bancroft is a national authority on drought-resistant gardening. Twice a month, she and her staff share their knowledge with readers. Q We have a large, old (probably about 40 ...

Prickly pear cactuses are so common in Southern California that they blend into the background, even now when the fruit, or tunas, are turning red-purple and dropping off. For the Santa Rita variety ...

The cactus pear is the Rodney Dangerfield of the fruit world, beloved by immigrants from parts of Latin America and the Mediterranean basin but largely ignored by most consumers in the United States.

In the courtyard of the historic Gutiérrez Hubbell House in Albuquerque's verdant South Valley, the afternoon sun is beginning to soften. A band plays under a spreading cottonwood, and in the audience ...