Cholla Fruit

Many of the common cactus plants of the desert Southwest have edible fruit. Mostly, this fruit gets eaten by birds, bats, and other fauna of the desert but potentially, it can be eaten by humans. If you see cactus jelly or candy for sale at a tourist-oriented store in Arizona, the cactus fruit used will almost always be from the Opuntia family with Prickly Pear fruit being the most common. One reason for this is that the fruit is fairly accessible for picking if you use a pair of salad tongs or similar items. However, cholla cactus also bave edible fruit and as you might guess, it is smaller, has less juice and better protected with very sharp spines.

Here is an appropriate poem.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost