You’ve heard of ramps and paw paws, but have you ever tasted Virginia’s own prickly pear cactus fruit? The fuchsia colored “tunas,” as they’re called by amateur foragers, are hitting their peak ripeness as we speak.
The Eastern Prickly Pear cacti, known by the species name Opuntia humifusa, grows north to New York, west to Iowa and south to Florida. But I only had to go as far as Richmond’s Manchester neighborhood to pick mine.
They look like a cactus, with vibrant green pads covered in nasty visible and nearly invisible spines. Picking them can be hard, but Jayton Howard, a horticulturist at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, has a suggestion: “Tongs go a long way.”…