Unusual foodLuckily, they are non-poisonousplants and you can taste any part of them. Only thorns and glochidia pose a certain danger. And if thorns are easy enough to remove from the surface of the stem, then glochidia require much more caution. Due to their small size, they can be missed and not noticed. And they carry microscopic hooks, thanks to which, when they get on the skin or other soft tissues, glochidia begin to intensively penetrate inside. As a result, severe swelling and inflammation develop. There is a known case when literally within a couple of hours a cow died after trying prickly pear. Many small glochidia dug into her tongue and oral tissues, severe swelling quickly developed, which led to suffocation. Some types of cacti, when consumed in excess, have an undesirable effect on the body due to the presence of medicinal substances in their juice. But they say that these cacti are also unpleasant to taste, so you can’t eat a lot of them. Cacti grown outside natural conditions may contain residual doses of fertilizers and chemicals that were used to treat them. Therefore, if you want to try a "home" cactus, you need to thoroughly wash the part you are tasting.
But in most cases, the pulp of cacti is nothas a special taste, more like grass. Only young shoots of prickly pears have a certain taste and are widely used in cooking. Young tender segments of prickly pears, previously cleared of thorns or glochids, are used to prepare hot dishes and added to various salads. They say it turns out no worse than cucumbers. Also, a sweet delicacy is prepared from cactus stems - candied fruit. In the desert regions of America, fresh cactus juice has long been used to quench the thirst of travelers and livestock. Juicy cactus fruits are essentially berries. They are used in the same way as other berries: eaten raw, cooked into jams, marmalade, baked, and drinks are made from them. Prickly pears are even specially planted in whole plantations, their berries have become a common commodity in the markets of many countries. In Vietnam, thanks to the humid warm climate, epiphytic cacti chylocereus have become widespread. Their fruits reach a weight of 500 g and have already firmly established themselves in local bazaars along with local tropical fruits. Even we, residents of a country far from the tropics, can try the berries of cacti grown in our homes. Widely distributed mammillarias easily form many red berries after flowering. They are juicy, with a pleasant sour taste, reminiscent of barberry fruits. The seeds in them are very small and do not interfere with tasting.
Mammillaria Prolifera with fruitsForest epiphytesSchlumbergera cacti can also please with juicy fleshy fruits almost the size of a plum. But to obtain them, cross-pollination with another Schlumbergera is necessary. They say that the most delicious fruit of indoor cacti is given by the famous "Queen of the Night" - Selenicereus. The only difficulty is to find a second flowering plant for cross-pollination, in extreme cases, you can try pollinating with pollen from another type of cactus. The resulting fruit will be the size of an apple, quite tasty, with a pleasant aroma. The peel is densely covered with hairs and thorns, so such a berry is simply cut in half and the pulp is eaten out with a spoon. These are cacti, amazing and unique children of Mother Nature.
