Santa Rita prickly pear cactus provides year-long color with its purple pads, yellow flowers, and red fruit. Here’s everything you need to know about planting and caring for this Sonoran Desert native.
Santa Rita prickly pear (Opuntia ‘Santa Rita’) is a native cactus found in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. The name Santa Rita refers to its being especially common in the foothills of Tucson’s Santa Rita Mountains.
This cactus has so many attractive features, it’s hard to believe it’s a native and not a nursery-bred hybrid! Its pads are blue-purple which turn more green with age. Every spring it bursts forth with showy yellow flowers. And when the flowers die, they are replaced with deep reddish-purple fruits.
Oddly, a little stress makes this plant even more attractive. The blue-gray pads turn more purple when stressed by heat, drought, or cold.
Santa Rita prickly pear is an extremely low-maintenance plant. Once established, it can exist on rainfall alone and requires almost no pruning. And it’s long-lived. Plants can live for 80 years!
Its pads and fruit attract all kinds of wildlife. And many people enjoy prickly pear fruit, too.
Why I Like This Plant
- Adds color to your garden all year long
- Tough desert survivor
- Virtually maintenance free
- Edible pads and fruit
- Attracts hummingbirds, bees
Things to Watch Out For
Santa Rita prickly pear pads are covered with spines, and both fruit and pads are covered with glochids, tiny, barely visible thorns. If you’ve ever gotten a handful of glochids, you know it’s an extremely unpleasant experience.
This prickly pear is very prone to developing an insect pest called cochineal scale.
Plants attract wildlife, both welcome and unwelcome. Amazingly, many desert animals don’t mind the spines and glochids. Javelinas, especially, like prickly pears — they are the mainstay of their diet. Pack rats eat them and like to burrow under them. Coyotes, desert tortoises, and jackrabbits will also munch on the pads and fruit.
Optimal Growing Conditions
If you’re thinking of adding a Santa Rita prickly pear plant to your garden, you need to find a suitable place that will keep your plant healthy and looking good… while minimizing maintenance for you.
Here are the key factors to keep in mind.
Temperature
Santa Rita prickly pear should be grown in USDA Hardiness Zones 9 – 11. Being a native, it can handle the desert’s temperature extremes and is cold-hardy down to 15℉.
Sun Exposure
Santa Rita prickly pear thrives in full sun and even reflected heat, but will tolerate part shade. Note that the more sun it receives, the more flowers it will produce.
Size and Growth Rate
Santa Rita prickly pear is a moderately fast growing cactus that ultimately reaches 6 feet tall and wide if left unpruned. Be sure to give this plant adequate space. You don’t want it near sidewalks, driveways, pools, or anywhere else people or pets are likely to bump into it.
Soil
Santa Rita prickly pear prefers poor, well-draining soil that’s sandy or rocky and alkaline. If you can, plant on a berm or mound which plants prefer over flat ground. This helps to assure good drainage.
Other Location Considerations
Santa Rita prickly pear can be planted in a container, provided it has excellent drainage. You can expect a potted plant to be smaller than those grown in the ground.
Santa Rita Prickly Pear:
The Essentials
| Common Name | Santa Rita prickly pear |
| Scientific Name | Opuntia ‘Santa Rita’ |
| Origin | Chihuahuan, Sonoran Deserts |
| Plant Type | Segmented cactus |
| USDA Zones | Zones 9 – 11 |
| Cold Hardiness | To 15℉ |
| Flower Color | Yellow |
| Flower Season | Spring |
| Mature Size | 6′ high x 6’ wide |
| Growth Rate | Moderate |
| Sun Tolerance | Full, reflected, part sun |
| Water Needs | Low |
| Pests & Diseases | Cochineal, Root rot if overwatered |
| Cautions | Spines, glochids |
| Wildlife | Attracts many desert species Deer, rabbit resistant |
How to Plant
Dig a hole as deep as and twice as wide as the nursery container. Carefully remove the plant from the container, put it in the hole, and press the soil to remove any air pockets.
It’s generally recommended that you backfill with native soil and not add any amendments.
However, good drainage is critical. So if you know your soil is slow draining, amend with coarse sand or small gravel until you have a loose, well-drained mix.
Plant your cactus in the same direction that it faced in the nursery. Better nurseries will mark the pot so you know which direction your cactus has been facing. Surprisingly, cactus can get sunburned, and planting them in the same orientation can minimize this.
When to Plant
The best time to plant cactus is in the spring or early summer when warm soil temperatures encourage root development.
How to Care for Santa Rita Prickly Pear
Whether you’ve recently planted a prickly pear or have an existing plant in your yard, here’s how to take care of it to keep it healthy and looking its best.
How to Water
You’re probably used to giving plants a good soaking immediately after transplanting, but that isn’t the best practice with cactus. Counterintuitively, it’s best to not water them for one to two weeks after planting.
When your cactus is young, water it once per month during the hot spring and summer, unless you’ve had rains of .5 inches or more. It should not need any irrigation during the winter. Too much water can cause this cactus to rot.
Once it’s established, it should not need supplemental water unless there is severe drought.
Should You Fertilize?
There is no need to fertilize prickly pears that are growing in the ground. They get all the nutrients they need from the surrounding desert soil. But if you grow one in a pot, fertilize lightly once a month spring through summer.
Pruning & Propagation
This plant rarely needs pruning except to remove dead or damaged pads or to keep its size in check. If you have trouble with pack rats, you may want to remove the lower pads, since they like to hang out among them.
If you decide to prune, always cut at pad joints.
You can use any pruned pads to easily propagate new plants. Let the pads dry and callus in the shade for a week or two, and then lay them flat on the ground or on the soil in a pot. They send out new roots from each areole (glochid bearing structure). It’s recommended that you not water them for the next month to avoid root rot.
Pro Tip!
A good rule of thumb for propagating succulents is “no roots, no water”.
Until roots have formed, watering will only cause rot.
Litter & Critters
While Santa Rita prickly pear has no leaf litter, it does shed messy fruits during the summer. Some people gather the fruit and extract the juice, but even if you have no interest in this prickly affair, you’ll probably want to pick up the fruits.
When left on the ground to rot, they become a magnet for critters you might not want in your yard, including javelinas, pack rats, wasps, flies, and gnats.
Unfortunately, cochineal scale is a common problem on Santa Rita prickly pear. An infestation looks like small balls of white cotton and can be removed by cutting off badly infested pads or by spraying them with the jet spray setting on your hose nozzle.
When left untreated, these sucking insects can eventually damage or even kill your plant. They can be such a nuisance that, according to the Arizona State University Plant Library, you not plant Santa Rita prickly pear unless you’re willing to regularly monitor and take active measures to keep cochineal infestation under control.
Plant Lover Facts
Santa Rita prickly pear (Opuntia ‘Santa Rita’) also goes by the common names blue blade cactus and purple prickly pear. It is one of the 200+ species in the Opuntia (prickly pear) genus.
There’s a lot of confusion about this plant’s scientific name so you may also see it called Opuntia violacea or Opuntia gosseliniana or varieties thereof.
Prickly pears have historically been extremely useful plants. Both the pads and the fruit are highly nutritious and traditional staples of the Mexican diet. The pads (called nopals or nopalitos) are eaten like a vegetable.
The prickly pear fruits are, confusingly to English speakers, called tunas. They are often used to make juice, jelly, syrup, and candy.
If you want to try either the pads or the fruits, be sure to remove the glochids first. The University of Nevada offers instructions here. And if you want to juice the fruit, check out the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum’s article Prickly Pear Harvesting 101.
Cochineal scale bodies contain carminic acid, a compound that can be used to create a bright red dye. It has been harvested for this purpose for thousands of years. Incredulously, it’s still used today. This FDA-approved coloring can be found in a wide variety of commercial products ranging from lipstick to snacks, beverages, and meats.
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Author Bio
Deane Alban is the creator of Southwest Gardener. She is a science writer with a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of South Florida. Gardening is her lifelong passion. She’s been gardening in Tucson for over 15 years.
