PRICKLY-PEAR. TUNA.
Opuntia Engelmanni, Salm. Cactus Family.
Erect, bushy, spreading shrubs without leaves, with flattened stems produced in successive, compressed oval Joints. Joints.—Six to twelve inches long; studded sparsely with bundles of stout spines. Flowers.—Solitary; sessile; yellow or red; about three inches across. Sepals, petals, and stamens numerous in many series, their cohering bases coating the one-celled ovary and forming a cup above it. Petals.—Spreading. Style one, with several stigmas. Fruit.—Purple; oval; pulpy; juicy; two inches long. Hab.—Southern California, Los Angeles, San Diego, etc.
The genus Opuntia is divided into two sections, consisting respectively of flat-stemmed and cylindrical-stemmed plants, the former commonly known as "prickly-pear," or "tuna," the latter as Cholla cactus.
Of the former, O. Engelmanni is our commonest wild species. It is the one seen from the car-windows growing in great patches upon the Mojave Desert, and it is abundant upon dry hills all through the south. There are two varieties of it—var. occidentalis, Engelm., the form prevalent in the interior, and var. littoralis, Engelm., found upon the sea-coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego.
These plants have a very leathery, impermeable skin, from which evaporation takes place but slowly, which enables them to inhabit arid regions. The fruit is sweet and edible, and the Indians, who are especially fond of it, dry large quantities for winter use. They make of the fresh fruit a sauce, by long-continued boiling, which they regard as especially nutritious and stimulating after it is slightly fermented. They also roast the leaves in hot ashes and eat the slimy, sweet substance which is left after the outer skin and thorns have been removed.
Cattle-men of the southern plains plant the different species as hedges about their corrals, and feed the succulent joints to their stock after burning off the spines.
Several Mexican species were planted in the early days about the Missions by the Padres, as defensive hedges, and remnants of these redoubtable fortifications, ten to fifteen feet high, are still to be seen stretching for miles through our southern fields.
In Mexico the Opuntia tuna is largely cultivated for the rearing of cochineal insects.