Barrel Cactus Edible Seed For Survival

When most people think of the desert they think of a hot, dry place with windblown sand and very little precipitation and a scarcity of food and water. While some of this is true much of it is not.

Antarctica is a huge desert, it is covered with stiff water and it sure isn't very hot! A desert means low annual precipitation and THAT is the only thing different deserts have in common.

The Sonoran Desert region in the Southwest portion of the United States certainly fits the generic billing in many ways of what first comes to mind when the word desert is mentioned. But lack of food isn't actually one of the standard characteristics found there. The deserts in this region actually have more wild edible plants than anywhere else on the planet! That is pretty amazing and unexpected, no?

The barrel cactus is one of the many cacti that live in this region and it is an excellent food source. Not just for survival, but for anyone, as the cacti can be quite tasty and can be grown outside its native habitat with very little care.

The barrel cactus blooms in the spring and sets fruit in the summer. Barrel Cactus is not actually a species, but a group of closely related cacti that come in the form of six different species. Think of barrel cacti as oaks or hickory. There are many different species of each. For our purposes I will just reference them as barrel cactus collectively.

You can recognize a barrel cactus using a few recognition factors. A barrel cactus can grow to as much as eight feet tall or so, but is much more frequently in the 2-4 foot range.

The flower color varies with species, but can be red, orange or yellow. One species has some spines that are hooked.

The barrel cactus fruit starts out green in color, but slowly turns yellow as it ripens. The fruit actually looks like a very small pineapple. Barrel cacti fruits are very succulent and will stay on the cactus plant for a considerable amount of time if left undisturbed.

The fruit of a barrel cactus does not have spines and this is a definitive identification tip that will let you know 100% that you have indeed found a barrel cactus. But really they aren't hard to identify and just the name of the cactus... barrel will give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

The fruit can be picked and eaten raw. The inside flesh and the seeds are both edible.

The taste is very pleasant and is similar to that of a kiwi... sort of!

The flower buds can also be eaten. Boil the buds and eat them just like that.

The cactus can also be used as a source of water, but only in very limited amounts or in real emergencies. It won't kill you but it will make you sick.

The barrel cactus seeds make great and nutritious flour, raw trail snack or Pinole which is ground up seeds mixed with other ingredients such as chia seeds, cinnamon, vanilla, etc. to serve as an ingredient to add to other foods.

Finally, the fruit has an extremely long shelf life of more than a year if kept in a dry location. This characteristic alone makes the Barrel Cactus and survival food to remember!