Food In The Wild

The prickly pear has many uses

- Paul Donovan

One of the first articles I wrote for SA4x4 was how to treat snakebite. Because I spend so much of my time in the bush, I thought it might be worth sharing my knowledge of how to avoid (or at least lessen) the risk of getting bitten.

Food is one of the priorities in any survival situation, or when we practise true bush craft by living off the land. The problem, of course, is in knowing which plants you can eat, and which you cannot. Eat the wrong one, and you could be in serious trouble. (I did discuss, in the February 2018 edition of SA4x4, how to determine whether a plant is edible or not by using the edibility test.)

In this issue, I thought I’d talk more about a cactus which is easily identifiable, which you can eat, and which is found just about everywhere. It is an invasive cactus from the Americas which is a serious problem in many countries, but can be a food source in times of need. Yes; I’m talking about the infamous Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia).

This cactus is an easy species to identify by its large pads. The two parts of the Prickly Pear which can be eaten are the pads (also called the nopales), and the fruits. Very little preparation is required to make either edible.