Sunday, August 20, 2017

The mighty prickly pear

by Marc Simmons

The only thing a cowboy minds more than getting bucked off his horse is landing in a prickly pear when he does. The chances of that happening in New Mexico are pretty good because the state has more than 30 different species of pear cactus. A serious run-in with the long barbed thorns can be painful business.

While some people do their best to steer clear of the plant, others will tell you that, handled carefully, it can be darned useful. Many old-timers claim that the roasted cactus pads held against the jaw will reduce the swelling caused by mumps. Years ago, travelers used to crush the cactus and drop a piece in dirty water taken from a stock tank or arroyo. This caused the mud to settle quickly to the bottom of the cup.

A thick growth of prickly pear can be a nuisance on a cattle ranch, since it tends to crowd out grass. But during an extended drought, ranchers’ burn off the spines with a flame thrower, and the cows will eat the pads sort of emergency rations.

In Mexico, the prickly pear is called a nopal, which comes from the Aztec word, nocheznopalli. It figures prominently, of course, in the national emblem, an eagle with a snake in its beak alighting on a pear cactus.

The reddish purple fruit is widely sold in Mexican markets. The juicy pears, called tunas, have a sweet, somewhat astringent taste resembling that of the pomegranate. Perhaps because the fruit contains more seeds than pulp, it has never been particularly popular in the United States.

Back in 1908, a series of experiments were conducted at Las Cruces in an effort to discover if prickly pear fruit had any commercial use. The project was carried out by professors in the chemistry department at New Mexico State University, then known as New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.

The scientists developed several experimental cactus farms on the bare and otherwise worthless tablelands above the Rio Grande Valley. They set out plants in rows twelve feet apart and found that they thrived in the sterile soil without cultivation or irrigation. The yield was an astounding 14 tons of tunas, or pears, per acre.

Having demonstrated that the cactus could be easily grown on marginal land, the scholars next tried to find a practical use for the tunas. First they pressed the juice and extracted, through an elaborate chemical process, a stain which turned out to be an excellent and harmless food coloring. The extraction operation, however, was expensive and, in fact, proved an insurmountable drawback. Next, the professors looked at the possibility of converting the juice, containing about 7 percent sugar, into alcohol.

There was no technical problem here and the economic prospects appeared good. Alcohol was then bringing 30¢ a gallon which meant that about $45 could be cleared on an acre of prickly pear. In 1908, $45 was a reasonable sum.

But one large problem still remained. The pears had to be harvested by hand, a costly and time consuming job. Even the scientists couldn’t hurdle that one. Said a local newspaper, “It is hoped that some genius will soon come forward with a machine which will lessen the labor of gathering tunas.” Evidently New Mexico was short on geniuses, for there, so far as we can tell, the prickly pear experiment ended.

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