Hunting for Wild Arizona Cacti

Here are a few wild cacti that I found growing in Arizona.

Look at this purple beauty. These cacti grow all over the place in Southern Arizona.

This is the Santa-Rita prickly pear cactus or the easier name to remember is purple prickly pear.

These guys are edible too lol. The only critter that is brave enough to eat one of these is the javelina, a critter that is a rodent but looks like a pig. One day I hope to get photos of these javelina but they are tricky because they are nocturnal and love to raid people's gardens and they will eat everything including thorny rosebushes and cactus.

Here is another common wild cactus called the bunny ears cactus. These ones don't tend to get eaten by wildlife as much because they are very tough and have some really irritating small fuzzy thorns on them. But if you ever find yourself in need of water in the desert you can cut them and get cactus juice out of them.

I'm not exactly sure on the ID of this one, it has some purple hues to it but it looks mostly like an Engelmann prickly pear. Most of these leafy cacti can be cooked and eaten but it is quite a chore to remove the thorns. Usually only the smooth prickley pear or nopale cactus is eaten because the thorns are super easy to remove.

Here is a cool looking cane cholla cactus. Another common name for these is jumping cactus because if you barely brush up against it that piece of it will break off and stick to you, almost as if it jumped on you on purpose. It is really difficult to remove them as multiple thorns easily end up sticking into you at the same time

Here you can see some pieces of it broken down on the ground, maybe a javelina walked by and got stuck by one. The nice thing about cholla cactus is the flower blooms are edible as well as the pears. The pears contain high amounts of calcium and they are often cooked with beans and spices.

This one definitely appears to be Engelmann's prickly pear. I found this one up in the mountain after it snowed the day before. I'm sure the cacti are absorbing as much snow water as possible before the summer hits here. If the cold lasts too long though they can get frozen and die.

Another really common succulent that grows like a weed in Arizona are agave plants. There are numerous different species. I believe this one is called the Shin Dagger Agave mainly because it grows to a height roughly as tall as your shins. Other species of agave are really tiny or they can get really large even up to 10 feet tall. In any case there is no shortage of these guys growing and if you know how to make tequila you can probably do tests to see which species of agave tastes the best.

That's all for now I hope to find more wild cacti here in Arizona. Thanks for looking