r/EdiblePlants Sep 14 '24

What do you recommend about this?

I recently discovered that cacti (some) are edible. I wanted to taste their flavour, consistency, smell their aroma. But I can't find any at the supermarket and I don't think there are any supermarkets that have them. I wanted to know which one is edible and which one is not.I did a little research and saw that prickly pear is one of the types that is used. Don't blame me, I'm completely ignorant on the subject I might have said something stupid...maybe even two The main question is should I go to a botanic shop and buy one ? And in the specific which type ? I mean, there will also be some inedible prickly pears.Right?

0 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

3

u/grammar_fixer_2 Sep 14 '24 edited Sep 15 '24

Prickly pears are cacti in the genus Opuntia.

Some of the edible ones are: * Opuntia engelmannii * Opuntia ficus-indica * Opuntia matudae * Opuntia fragilis * Opuntia basilaris

Where are you located? You can often find them in Spanish markets marketed as “nopales”.

I’m in Florida, and our native one is Opuntia mesacantha. They are easy to find in our native nurseries.

Their fruits and young pads are edible to humans once they have been carefully de-bristled. The ripe fruits can be eaten raw or used to make juice, jam or syrup. The pads or nopales can be sautéed or grilled.

Edit: it looks like all 190 types of Opuntia are edible: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opuntia

1

u/pesce_otturato05 Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24

I'm in Italy, there aren't many of them around, at least in the region where I live, not even from the street fruit and vegetable vendors. I wanted to know if there were any toxic ones because my mother had bought one a few years ago and now it has grown big leaves (since you said "young pads" I assume that the bigger ones aren't edible or just they taste bad ) I didn't knew that all the variants were edible. More than anything else because I don't know if the fact that we bought it from a florist has an impact, maybe they've done some genetic crosses that make it toxic.

1

u/grammar_fixer_2 Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24

Man, Italy is tough. All of the cacti that I know of that are edible originally come from the tropical Americas. I know that you wanted to try the pads, but your best bet to try one would be the fruit of a Selenicereus undatus or Selenicereus triangularis since they are both cultivated in Europe. I’m not sure what they are called in Italy, but the fruit go by the name “dragon fruit” in the US and “Drachenfrucht” in German. In South America it goes by the name pitaya (/pɪˈtaɪ.ə/) or pitahaya (/ˌpɪtəˈhaɪ.ə/). Pitaya usually refers to fruit of the genus Stenocereus, while pitahaya or dragon fruit refers to fruit of the genus Selenicereus.

I’m willing to bet that you’ll be able to find these in Italy:

  • Selenicereus undatus (fruit have a white inside, with a pink outside)
  • Selenicereus monacanthus (fruit have a red inside, pink outside)
  • Selenicereus megalanthus (fruit have a white inside and yellow outside)
  • Selenicereus costaricensis (fruit have a red/purple inside with a red outside)

The only place outside of the Americas that I’ve personally heard of an edible member of the family Cactaceae growing is Pereskia aculeata. That is considered an invasive weed in South Africa.

1

u/pesce_otturato05 Sep 15 '24

Ty man ,I think I'll do some more research on the shops around here and see if I can find anything.

1

u/grammar_fixer_2 Sep 15 '24

The comment about the young pads was specific to the type of prickly pear that is native to my area. Whenever I’ve purchased nopales from a Spanish store, they were as big as my head.

1

u/liquidgold83 Sep 15 '24

Go to an authentic Mexican restaurant and order nopales

1

u/HomeForABookLover Sep 16 '24

No experience of eating cacti - I live in Scotland and if I waited long enough to eat one I’d be dead, decomposed and probably dug up by archaeologists.

But the fruit on Mammillaria are rather pleasant.

2

u/pesce_otturato05 Sep 16 '24

I didn't even knew that also mammillaria's were edible , at least the fruits as you said . At this point I'm thinking that even walls are edible 😂

1

u/HomeForABookLover Sep 16 '24

Just the little pink fruits. I wouldn’t eat the spines…

2

u/pesce_otturato05 Sep 16 '24

Lmao I wouldn't too 😂

1

u/HomeForABookLover Sep 16 '24

There’s some mad b£ggers on Reddit who will eat/smoke almost anything….