Share The Seeds
Botany and Research => Plant Science => Topic started by: MadPlanter on July 23, 2015, 01:45:48 AM
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Thought it sounded interesting when I read in the item description that if one eats the fruit of this cactus it potentially has intoxicating effects. Figured some of you might wanna look into this guy so here's a link!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cylindropuntia-leptocaulis-Cactus-Seed-Christmas-Cholla-Tasajillo-Turkey-Pear-/121489643777?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c4958d901
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Ethnobots who have ate the fruit reported no effects.
It was reportedly added to mild corn beer, that may be where its perception as intoxicating came from. Although there may be a more likely reason for its inclusion...
Among the Opuntia and Cylindropuntia species the flowers as well as the fruits are often used as hangover cures or preventatives. Adding opuntia family fruits and flowers to corn beer might just be an attempt to wake up the next morning without feeling like you've been dragged face down through the desert sand ;)
Has anyone trialed Opuntias for hangovers?
My O. engelmanii really looks medicinal to me, but I dont drink...
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Interesting, I haven't tried Opuntia for a hangover.
I eat nopales (Optunia streptacantha) tacos all the time, so maybe I'll try that for breakfast next time I have a hangover.
Hcc
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The small, red fruit of the turkey or coyote cactus (Opuntia leptocaulis), known among the Spanish-Americans as tasajulla and garrambulo, are still used by being crushed and mixed with tulbai. They are reported as having such pronounced narcotic effects that the Indians will not walk close to plants which bear them, and they claim that eating a single fruit will make one "drunk and dizzy."
Daniel Moerman, in his Native American Ethnobotany, also reports that the "narcotic fruits are crushed and mixed with a beverage to produce narcotic effects" by the Apache, Chiricahua, and Mescalero Indians. Contemporary growers of this species have partaken of O. leptocaulis' fruit and have reported no psychoactive effect.