Prickly Pear Cactus: Canada's most Common Cactus& notes on Nopalitos from Bill Casselman's Canadian Word of the Day

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Although it is a surprise to visitors from abroad (the ones who arrive in Calgary looking for polar bears) Canada indeed has several native cacti and the prickly pear cactus is our most common. Opuntia polyacantha, our prickly pear cactus, has spines. Thence was it dubbed “prickly.” Its fruit is edible. That’s why it’s called a prickly pear. The fruits of this cactus are big faves in Mexican kitchens. The fruit of prickly pear is called tuna in Spanish. Despined, flat, succulent leaves are known as nopalitos. I discuss them at the end of this piece. There are many species of Opuntia, with jointed stems, cylindrical or flattened, armed with bristles, usually with spines.

Intrepid Author Meets Cactus

My first encounter with Canadian prickly pear cacti happened on a blue-sky autumn day in the badlands of southern Alberta, hiking along the gentle sandy slopes of a dried-up coulee near the University of Lethbridge. I can remember that morning forty years ago in detailed focus. Dawn roared up like a trumpet call and made every cell in my body shout “I’m alive today!” I wanted to jump into a canoe like a gung-ho voyageur and charge down prairie rivers looking for China! Instead I was taping an interview for a national CBC Radio program with a congenial botanist from U. of L. and our episode that day was indeed ‘A Walk Through A Coulee,’ during which the professor delivered a folksy but exact introduction to common coulee plants of southern Alberta.

Species

Opuntia polyacantha (Botanical Latin from Greek < polys Greek ‘many’ + acanthos Greek ‘thorn,’ ‘spine’) has indeed many spines. On the dry banks of old coulees in southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, on the dry hills of British Columbia’s interior, even on some dry islands in Georgia Strait, the prickly pear cactus blooms in early summer. Surprisingly too, it also grows in Ontario on Pelee Island in Lake Erie.

Sensual Flowers

Among the cat’s cradle of prickly spines sit sensual cups of translucent yellow sepals, seemingly spun of buttery silk. These cactus flowers really do look like sexual organs, and of course they are, as they beckon insects into their vulval bowls with the promise of nectar, and send them on their way with a freight of pollen, male microspores eager to egg-on any friendly ovum in the area. But sweet as the flowers are, prickly pear spines penetrate shoe leather quick as steel needles. They hide under snow too and stiletto straight through a ski boot. But if you skin the stubby leaves and carefully pluck out the spines, you can eat the leaves after roasting them in the bottom of a hot campfire.

Etymology of the Genus Name Opuntia

The genus name Opuntia is Botanical Latin, in scientific use since 1754, from Opos, the name of an ancient Greek village in Locria on the coast of Euboea. It was Opos, Opountis in Greek, noted for some spiny plant, but not our prickly pear cactus.

In Greek mythology, the place was said to have been named after Opos, the foster son of Lokros, an early king of Locris. There is no evidence that either person ever existed; and those names look like many tired attempts of ancient etymology where no one could figure out how a place received its name, so local guessers made up an eponymous founder. Every language group on earth does this. For hypothetical example, a town’s name is Glorksnerkel. What the heck does that mean? Nobody knows. Wait a minute, wasn’t there a king Glork of Snerkel back in the misty mists of creaking antiquity. Oh sure.

I here suggest a much more likely origin of the town name of Opos. What if, in ancient times, there grew in florid abundance near this town natural stands of some plant that gave a milky latex juice, similar to juices from certain figs. Opos was a Greek word that denoted sap, the juice of fruits, the milky juice of certain figs. In the great national epic poem of Greece, The Iliad, Homer tells us that opos was an ingredient in ancient Greek cheese-making. In Book 5 of the Iliad opos is used like rennet for curdling milk. So it was a valuable substance that could be traded. Many Greek towns were named after things much less important, and some ancient towns were named after their most significant export.

If the town’s name was Opos (stem Opount-) how did that superfluous letter i get into the genus name of prickly pear cactus, that is, into the name Opuntia. It should be Opunta. The Roman writer of an early encyclopedia, Pliny the Elder (“Uncle Pliny” as my classics professor used to call him. He was the uncle of the younger, letter-writing Roman diarist Pliny) used the correct Greek form of the name, not too difficult seeing that Uncle Pliny borrowed the passage from an earlier Greek writer on nature, Theophrastus. Pliny wrote “circa Opuntem est herba etiam homini dulcis” ‘near Opus grows a plant sweet-tasting even to people.’ By 1498 CE this was in Italian as opunzia. So the extraneous i had slithered in as the word was altered in some early Italian dialect. It shows up in a Middle French text in 1562, in a translation of the Pliny encyclopedia entry. From there it meandered into English.

Surprise Drug Connection

A Hellenistic Greek diminutive form of opos ‘juice’ is opion ‘poppy juice.’ This is the origin of the word for one of the world’s ugliest narcotics, opium. Pliny put this Greek word into Latin as opium.

My Etymology of the Word Cactus

The capacious cactus family (Botanical Name: Cactaceae) is made up of about 85 genera and some 2,000 species. Cactus came to us through Latin from a Greek word kaktos. In ancient Greek it was the prickly cardoon plant, related to an artichoke, still cultivated for its edible root and petioles, and, incidentally, the flavouring in an aperitif sold under the brand name of Cynara. The cardoon or Spanish Artichoke has the botanical name, Cynara cardunculus.

Most dictionaries say the Greek word kaktos is of unknown origin. Uh-huh. To me, the Greek word kaktos looks borrowed from ancient Egyptian qatcha ‘thorns, thornbush.’ The Egyptian term was heard by Greek ears as if it contained their word kakos which meant ‘bad’ or ‘injurious,’ in reference to the spines of the cardoon.

Note on English usage

The proper plural is cactuses. But the most common plural in modern English is the Botanical Latin, cacti.

Nopalitos

La tuna is the Spanish botanical name for the prickly pear cactus. In Mexico, tuna refers to the fruit of the prickly pear. Nopal is the Aztec word for the prickly pear cactus and the modern Mexican and South American Spanish for prickly pear cactus. Nopales is the Spanish plural of nopal, and the diminutive form is nopalito.

Nopalitos are the flat, fleshy edible pads of Opuntia species. They are picked; the spines are carefully removed; the nopalitos are chopped up, boiled, or grilled. You can add them to eggs or use them as a vegetable in soups, chilies or tortilla filling. One favourite recipe is to grill the nopalitos over hot coals until tender and just brown. Then slice into strips and toss with a squeeze of lime and a splashlet of olive oil. ¡Sabroso! ¡Rico! ¡Delicioso!

Peel That Tuna

Are Canadian prickly pear cactus leaves edible too? Absolutely; and they might make a good emergency food if one were lost in, say, the badlands in southern Alberta in some lonely stretch of Milk River country. However, in the wild, easy removal of the spines is difficult. One can chew the cactus fruit too. It’s full of vitamin C. But watch out for those bristles! Mexicans eat the fruit frequently as las tunas. Italians do too. In Italy they are called fichi d'india ‘Indian figs.’ The pears with the purple interior are the sweetest. The fruit has numerous tiny spines and must be carefully peeled before eating. They can be eaten chilled or devoured at simple room temperature. It is customary in Italy to present the fruit in a bowl of cold water. The prickly pear fruit is also the base for prickly pear jams and jellies as well as Mexican cactus candy. A delicious cactus salad, ensalada de nopalitos, features cooked nopalitos, chopped white onion, chopped cilantro, dried Mexican oregano and acidulous squirts of fresh, tongue-rippling lime juice.