Thank you!

Why is the name on the headline kirigamist , when your screen name is Cheap Shoots?

Rob, it does look awfully happy, doesn't it?

Jay i'm not sure what you mean by headline, but IIRC I changed my user name from kirigamist before I posted anything.

I don't know what Opuntia species it is, but some are edible. Nopalitos salad is delicious. Just make sure you rinse off all the slime from the cactus. I don't usually care what my food looks like, as long as it taste good, but in this case, I'll make an exception.https://www.thebossykitchen.com/authentic-mexican-cactus-leaves-salad-ens

It's Opuntia stricta, a declared weed pest of national significance, especially in NSW where you and I both live.
"General Biosecurity Duty
All plants are regulated with a general biosecurity duty
to prevent, eliminate or minimise any biosecurity risk they may pose.
Any person who deals with any plant, who knows (or ought to know) of any
biosecurity risk, has a duty to ensure the risk is prevented,
eliminated or minimised, so far as is reasonably practicable."

Read all About It...

Burn it with fire?

Thanks Jay! Yeah one of the reasons I want to ID it is to see if I can eat it : )

Shaxhome, thank you. However while I don't doubt that it is likely a noxious weed, it does not seem to fit descriptions of O. Stricta, nor does it align with my own observations of the plant (that I believe) is O.stricta. A few of the differences:

- the cladodes are much thinner, they are even slightly translucent(see photo). And they are greener, shinier and more elongated.
- it is mostly spineless, no more than 5% of the pads have spines
- it grows really tall. I estimate one plant to be 6 metres tall (over 20 ft, see photo)
- it has a distinctive trunk (see photo)

Looks like it could be Opuntia cochinillifera to me.

Oh my Leslie, I think you might be right! I've got to read up a little more, anyway it's an awfully good suggestion.

Yep I do think it is O. cochenillifera, thank you so much Leslie.
Surprisingly, It is not recorded as being weedy or naturalized in nsw, or Australia, as far as I can find. Looks like it's rather palatable - pads and fruits. I'll research a little more before I try it, but look forward to my first experience of nopales! These plants could turn out to be a great foraging resource for me. At least if I like nopales : )

Many thanks.

Maybe it is another noxious Opunta, but I live on 100 acres of native bush with, dunno, several hundred scattered clumps of O. stricta. The ones in the shade are very similar to your pics, darker green, taller growing, fewer cladodes and smoother surfaces, while those out in the open are lower growing, of paler colour and covered in long, vicious spines. There is quite a range of different growth habits.

Whatever you name yours, they still give me a visceral reaction from battling infestations for 15 years. But as always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Here's another cactus that grows wild on my place, seeds spread by birds from a neighbour's garden more than a kilometre away. Quite beautiful when they flower for one week a year, but otherwise a pest that's appearing with much greater frequency on my place...

Envy you your native bush, but not your opuntia! I do understand having a visceral reaction to weeds, where I grew up was very suburban except it backed on to an escarpment of (degraded) subtropical rainforest. It has given me a lifelong hatred of lantana, all kinds. I'm befuddled that anyone would ever have planted it as an ornamental, and i find them all very ugly, even the ones I've never seen growing as weeds.

Oddly, most of the prickly pear I see growing around here seems to be intentionally grown in people's gardens.