Prickly pear

Contents

Types of prickly pear
Care for prickly pear at home
Reproduction of prickly pear at home
Opuntia transplant at home
prickly pear diseases
Prickly pear pests
Popular questions and answers

In nature, prickly pear form whole groves of plants up to 4 meters high and with cakes up to half a meter long. This is a very unpretentious cactus and can be easily grown at home.

Everyone knows this hardy cactus with edible fruits. Prickly pear has flat, juicy shoots of a round or oval shape, a kind of ears or flat cakes. They grow from one another at different angles, forming bizarre silhouettes. It happens that a traveler who has fallen into such thickets is not at all easy to get out of there.

Shoots of prickly pear, like all cacti, have halos – highly modified axillary buds with long sharp spines and bunches of thin spines – glochidia. These villi are very insidious. At the ends they have notches, like an arrowhead. When in contact with the skin, they break off and attach to it, causing irritation and itching.

Prickly pear flowers are solitary, sessile, large and showy, reminiscent of roses. The color is white, yellow, orange, red in different shades.

The fruits are large, juicy and also with thorns on the outside. Collect them in tight gloves. Seeds are dark, rounded, with a hard shell (1).

In tropical and subtropical climates, prickly pear is grown as a food and fodder plant – this is a favorite delicacy of donkeys. Young shoots, peeled of thorns and glochidia, are used as vegetables – fresh, fried, baked, pickled. Large sweet fruits, despite the difficulty of cleaning them, as well as a large number of seeds hard as a fraction, are a delicacy in many countries. They are used to prepare molasses, jam, raw jam, marmalade, marshmallow, dried fruits, drinks – syrup, juice and wine. On the island of Malta, several companies produce the signature flavored liqueur Baitra (Bajtra) from prickly pear fruit, which tourists take with them.

Not devoid of prickly pear and medicinal properties. The juice of some of its species has a wound-healing effect. Fleshy shoots in folk medicine are used for compresses and in the treatment of burns.

Inside the old shoots of prickly pear is not rotting wood – strong, but at the same time porous and winding. Candlesticks, pens, polished jewelry are made from it.

In ornamental gardening, prickly pear is used in landscape compositions in gardens and parks, as well as as hedges.

As a houseplant, prickly pear has been known since the beginning of the 2th century, but indoors they bloom reluctantly and only under favorable conditions, and, as a rule, do not give fruit. However, in winter gardens and wall-mounted heated greenhouses of cottages and country houses, their chances for a complete life cycle of shoots increase markedly, especially with additional illumination (XNUMX).

Young plants usually flower at 10 years of age or older.

Interesting fact

According to an ancient legend, the Aztecs, tired of long wanderings in the mountains, stopped on the shore of the beautiful Lake Texcoco and saw an eagle tearing a snake on a large prickly pear. It was a good sign of the gods and the tribe founded the city of Tenochtitlan here – the “Place of the sacred prickly pear” – the current Mexico City. Now this scene from the legend is displayed on the Mexican coat of arms.

Types of prickly pear

More than 350 species of prickly pear are known in nature. But only a few of them are used in culture.

Prickly pear (Opuntia microdasys). Compact branching plant up to 60 cm high for indoor floriculture. The stem consists of oval dark green segments up to 15 cm long with numerous halos-pads of brightly colored glochidia – yellow, red and pearly white (form Albinospina). The flowers are yellow. The fruits are large red.

Opuntia Bergera (Opuntia bergeriana). It grows up to 1 m. The shoots are elongated, light green, with long yellow spines. Blooms at an early age, and abundantly. The flowers are orange-red with a green pistil.

Prickly pear white hair (Opuntia leucotricha). Stem fragments are elongated – up to 25 cm. A feature of this species is long white spines, with which all shoots are densely dotted. The flowers are small, golden yellow.

Prickly Pear (Opuntia cylindrica). Plants with cylindrical stems atypical for prickly pear, they are also called pterocactus.

Opuntia Indian, or fig (Opuntia ficus-indica). The trunk is woody at the base. Shoots olive green. Numerous cream spines are located on small halos. The flowers are bright amber, with a golden hue. In nature, it gives a good harvest of very tasty and fragrant fruits.

Prickly pear Gosselin (Opuntia gosseliniana). Plants begin to bloom from 5 years. In young prickly pear shoots are reddish, in adults they are blue-green with a silvery sheen. Only the upper part of the segments is strewn with soft long spines. The flowers are yellow, fragrant.

Care for prickly pear at home

Prickly pear is easy to grow and adapts well to different conditions. For the summer, it is desirable to relocate it to fresh air – to a balcony or even to a summer cottage. In the phase of budding and flowering, plants cannot be rearranged from place to place, this threatens to fall off the flowers (3).

Ground

For prickly pear, special soils for cacti and succulents or a soil mixture of the following composition are suitable: soddy soil, coarse sand, fine gravel or expanded clay (2: 3: 1) with the addition of clay (4).

Lighting

Large healthy prickly pear plants are formed only with intense lighting. The ideal location is a south window or near it, protected from direct sunlight (4).

Temperature

In winter, prickly pear is kept at a temperature of 5 – 15 ° C and low soil and air humidity. At higher temperatures, plants stretch and weaken.

In summer, the favorable temperature is 23 – 30 °C, but in principle, plants tolerate a wide range of positive temperatures (4).

Humidity

Cacti are exceptionally drought tolerant and even at home can live for a long time without irrigation. Therefore, they are watered abundantly, but rarely:

during the growth period – 1 time in 10 – 15 days, depending on the temperature and drying of the soil;
in winter – 1 time in 20 – 25 days (until the next watering, the earth should dry out, at low temperatures, watering is stopped).

Use only soft settled water. It is necessary to water from a watering can along the edge of the pot so that water does not fall on the plants.

And yet, oddly enough, prickly pear, and other cacti, too, love spraying, because in nature every morning they are covered with tiny drops of dew. Therefore, from time to time they need to be sprayed. You will need a fine mist sprayer. The can is filled with warm water (30 – 35 ° C), when sprayed, it cools.

The room where prickly pear grows must be regularly ventilated (4).

Fertilizers and fertilizing

Prickly pear, like most cacti, from spring to late summer, once a month, they are fed with complex mineral fertilizers for cacti and succulents or liquid fertilizer for cacti. Organic fertilizers are not suitable for these desert dwellers. Solutions are prepared according to the instructions.

Fertilization is stopped in autumn (2).

Trimming

Regular pruning is not required. It is done only when the cactus needs help, or to change the appearance of the plant, giving it a beautiful shape or simply reducing it in size. Often pruned shoots stretched out after winter (2).

Reproduction of prickly pear at home

Cuttings. This is the main way. Young shoots are cut off at the point of origin, dried for 1-3 days in the shade and planted for rooting, deepening a little, in a sterilized mixture of peat and sand (1: 1). The substrate is slightly moistened, and the container with plants is covered with a thin film or non-woven fabric on the frame. The temperature is maintained at 20°C.

When new buds appear on the handle, it is transplanted into a permanent pot.

Seeds. Prickly pear seeds have a very hard shell, so they must be scarified before sowing – make small notches with a nail file. Then the seeds are soaked for 30 minutes in a pink solution of potassium permanganate and after that for another 12 hours in warm water, I change it several times. After such preparation, the seeds are sown in dry soil of the same composition and the container is covered with glass. Next, the substrate is periodically sprayed. The temperature is maintained at 22°C.

Germination can take up to a month and it is important that the seeds do not rot. The grown seedlings dive into small pots (2).

Opuntia transplant at home

Young prickly pears are transplanted every year or every other year, adults – once every 4 – 5 years, as they grow or when the substrate is depleted.

Replanting cacti is much easier than other indoor plants, their roots are easily released from the soil and survival is usually high.

The best transplant time is at the end of winter. Watering should be stopped within a week. A new pot in diameter should be 2 – 3 cm larger than the previous one. Plants are buried to the level of the root neck.

Transplantation can be alternated with transshipment in larger containers while maintaining an earthen clod.

Transplanted plants begin watering after 10 to 12 days (5).

prickly pear diseases

Cacti are more susceptible to physiological – non-infectious diseases that develop under unfavorable conditions for plants. Stale air in a poorly ventilated room, high humidity of air and soil, especially at low temperatures, contribute to the emergence and spread of diseases.

The main signs of ailments:

Brown spots on shoots. The reason is over watering.

The affected segments are cut to healthy tissue and treated with crushed coal.

Wrinkled leaves. This is usually due to lack of light or excess moisture.

It is recommended to rearrange the plant in a brighter place and adjust the watering.

Cessation of growth. A consequence of excess moisture in winter and (or) nutrient deficiency, including trace elements.

Proper watering and regular fertilizing will correct the situation.

Weakened plants can become infected with fungal diseases: late blight (wet rot) and phomosis(dry rot). To protect against them, fungicides are used – Bordeaux mixture, Fundazol, Polyhom (3).

Prickly pear pests

The main pests of prickly pear are spider mites and mealybugs, scale insects willingly settle on the shoots, and nematodes on the roots. Regular inspection of plants will allow you to immediately notice the appearance of pests and take action.

Spider mite. It multiplies rapidly in a dry, poorly ventilated area. It feeds on the cell sap of plants, mainly on young shoots. With a strong defeat, prickly pear stops growing, and the color of the shoots changes to yellowish or reddish.

Acaricides are suitable for treatment: Neoron, Sunmite, etc. – according to the instructions.

Mealybug. With the accumulation of these small insects, the cacti seem to be sprinkled with flour. White lumps of ovipositions are also clearly visible.

At the initial stage of infestation, insects and eggs can be washed off with a damp brush. Heavily affected plants are treated with insecticides – Aktellik, Fufanon (6), etc., and covered with plastic wrap for a day.

Против nematodes the soil is shed twice, with an interval of 7 – 10 days, with nematicides (Vidat, Nematofagin-Mikopro, etc.), according to the instructions. Shchitovok mostly removed mechanically, and then the shoots are washed with a weak solution of potassium permanganate (3).