Prickly pear growing in live oak
Yesterday I showed you a pool-swimming tarantula. Today it’s a tree-climbing prickly pear. See it up there?
I was on wildflower safari south of San Antonio when I spotted a venerable live oak with spiny opuntia growing along one huge limb. It must have found a crevice on the branch, but how did it get up there? Do mammals or other creatures eat prickly pear tunas (fruit) and deposit seeds up in trees?
You can see another prickly pear patch at far left along the same limb. The world is full of interesting things, no?
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Digging Deeper
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Lol, Pam! Have you entered some kind of spring vortex?! I have a practice of looking for one beauty and one blessing to record every day. At the rate you’re going you could fill a notebook in a week.
I think so! What a spring it’s been so far. I like your practice of looking for a beauty/blessing to make note of each day. Practicing gratitude!
Prickly pears in a live oak… can it get much more Texas than that?
Love this! So much better than a tarantula in a swimming pool…
Ha!
Perhaps if a longhorn was lounging in a live oak?
Dang! I knew something was missing… Keep traveling Texas back roads and something like that’s bound to turn up.
My local botanic garden has an Opuntia growing halfway up a silk floss tree. I make a point of pointing it out to kids during the tours I lead. They all love the idea that some bird “planted” the seed.
So do birds eat the tunas then? It seems like something a rodent would eat, but maybe birds can get into them somehow.
I have seen nopales in trees before, usually live oaks. I too, have wondered how they get there.
I keep hoping a wildlife expert will chime in to let us know.
Makes you go hmmm. I’m sometimes surprised where things show up but at the end of the day my entire garden is the wildlife’s toilet.
That is a hilarious way to think about it, Karin!
Prickly pear growing in the canopy live oaks and large mesquites is a common site out here on the western side of the Hill Country where it is more savannah like and arid. I imagine the critters planting seeds are raccoons and possums rather than birds; they love “pear apples”.
Prickly pear can also be seen growing in leaf litter in old tin roofs on old railroad trestles or anywhere else they can latch on. A good point of interest is the old live oak in the middle of the Baylor, Scott & White hospital in Marble Falls. That tree has both prickly pear and nipple cactus growing on it’s limbs.
Thanks for that interesting cactus info, Zachary! It makes sense that it would be raccoons and possums — and maybe ringtails? — that carry the fruit up into the trees.