Do Prickly Pear spineless Cactus have "little" spikes that get stuck in your hand?

[Kapidolo Farms]

“Glochids or glochidia (singular "glochidium") are hair- like spines or short prickles, generally barbed, found on the areoles of cacti in the sub-family Opuntioideae.”

To add a bit to this complete definition. If you wear latex or nitril gloves the glochids come out when you pull the gloves of 98% of the time. You can burn them off, at least the ones on the exterior of the pad, but there are more just below the surface that will protrude as the fleshy part dries a little bit, even over a few hours. No type is glochid free.

 

[Loohan]

One observation i have is that i live in an area where 3-toed boxies run wild, but i have never noticed that they ate any of my "spineless" opuntia. Maybe they don't recognize it? Spineless is a modern cultivar, and the stand i raided 20 years ago had the only opuntia i've noticed in the wild here.

 

[Ciri]

I've had the same concern about the spineless prickly pear cactus pads and fruit. I use tweezers to remove all the large spines from prickly pear, but also as many of the tiny spines which are present on "spineless" prickly pear cactus as well. I know they wouldn't get this special treatment in the wild, but I find it not to be too much extra effort.

 

[Tom]

Hello. I have always wondered about this like yeah what would they do in the free desert? but I come from Mexico and we eat cactus pads "nopales" very often there so I always knew to clean them with a knife so that's why I do with my "spineless" which yeah have a lot of fiberglass ones like, here sometimes I get one in the bathroom or any other room I guess it flies from the backyard on my clothes or I don't get it but they are very annoyigg and painful! I just don't think that burning them work so good so I prefer to just take my time to cut them clean. Some markets here sells them cleaned already but the stores are kinda far from me.
One time I saw a video and this guy made a sharp hole like a knife in a spoon so it was super easy to clean the spines, you can find the video on YT. I tried making one but it wasn't so sharp so I went back to my good knife.

I just don't want to dare to hurt my tort (russian), he loves them altough I don't feed him nopales that often. I have planted some in his garden and he would never even touch them, go figure, he is very smart why would he if I feed him the cleaned ones

Now that I'm thinking and I supposed nobody here has tried nopales, they are very tasty cooked in several ways and they taste like okra, has anyone fed okra to your torts?

I eat nopales once in a while. Great on tacos!

 

[TechnoCheese]

I eat nopales once in a while. Great on tacos!

They almost remind me of bell peppers!