Landscapes and cityscapes worldwide have become Americanized. Starbucks coffeeshops and Macdonald fastfood restaurants proliferate. Likewise, the so-called GAFAM tech giant corporations — Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft — dominate the worldwide web. Even though we may fancy Americanization a recent phenomenon, it is definitely not. Soon after discovery of the New World, at the turn of the sixteenth century, Spaniards and Portuguese imported native plants into Europe.
This cactus is an example. It proliferates in Sicily and in other Mediterranean locations. Ubiquitous in Sicily, it gives the misleading impression of being native. Actually, its origins are in Latin America, more accurately it comes from coastal and southern Mexico. Nowadays, this species, known as the prickly pear, is cultivated commercially in more than 20 countries. Fruit production is at a maximum in the second and third years. Another asset of this plant is its hardiness in the face of drought. It has a lifespan usually of 25-50 years.
A perennial shrub, it may reach a height of 3-5 m (10-17 ft). The stems are thick, resemble spatulae and succulent. The waxy skin is water-repellent and sun-reflecting. The flowers first appear in early May through the early summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the fruits ripen from August through October.
Eating the fruit demands the prior removal, usually by the vendor, of the miniscule thorns that are also responsible for the prickiness. Those, technically known as glochides, invisible to the naked eye, are nevertheless agressive.
It is worth the trouble! A host of dietary benefits accrue from the fruit and its derivatives, juices or jams. The oil of the seeds is rich in vitamin E, an antioxidant. Both fructose and glucose sweeten the juice. Compared with juices from other fruits, it has low acidity and thus a rather high pH. It is high in vitamin C. All in all, a commendable fruit juice!that are also Another asset of the fruit is its naming in English, prickly pear, with the p consonant opening both words. Thus, T. S. Eliot, in his 1927 poem, “The hollow men” could write, in a parody of a nursery rhyme:
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.