What Cacti Look Like After Blooming Season

This is my Grizzly Prickly Pear cactus.

You have to enlarge this.

Each one of those soon-to-be red pods are exactly where a flower bloomed this year, predominently in April. You can see why there were a lot of cactus flower blips!

The red parts, if they don't totally dry up and wither away, will develop juice inside of them. Prickly pear juice is very popular. It is used to make syrup to put over pancakes. It is also used to make candies and jellies. Research shows that the ingredients present in prickly pear juice benefits to lower blood glucose, decrease cholesterol, and kill viruses present in the body. It also helps hangovers.

I am very proud of this particular plant. I grew it from sticking one pad in the ground six years ago and just letting it grow on it's own.

You can get a sense of its size by comparing it to the size of the bricks in the wall. I haven't seen any of this particular type of cactus around so I'm not quite sure if it's native to this area.