Buying: 2x Live pad / slice for rooting
Opuntia ficus-indica, the Indian fig opuntia, fig opuntia, or prickly pear, is a species of cactus that has long been a domesticated crop plant grown in agricultural economies throughout arid and semiarid parts of the world. ficus-indica is the most widespread and most commercially important cactus.It is grown primarily as a fruit crop, and also for the vegetable nopales and other uses. Cacti are good crops for dry areas because they efficiently convert water into biomass. O. ficus-indica, as the most widespread of the long-domesticated cactuses, is as economically important as maize and blue agave in Mexico. Opuntia species hybridize easily, but the wild origin of O. ficus-indica is likely to have been in central Mexico, where its closest genetic relatives are found.
Names
Most culinary references to the "prickly pear" refer to this species. The Spanish name tuna is also used for the fruit of this cactus and for Opuntia in general; according to Alexander von Humboldt, it was a word of Taino origin taken into the Spanish language around 1500.
Common English names for the plant and its fruit are Indian fig opuntia, Barbary fig, cactus pear, prickly pear, and spineless cactus, among many others.In Mexican Spanish, the plant is called nopal, a name that may be used in American English as culinary terms. Peninsular Spanish mostly uses higo chumbo for the fruit and chumbera for the plant.