Eastern Prickly Pear flowers in full bloom

The prickly pears are fully in bloom this time of year, it is really cool to see the cacti in the baskets have so many flowers. Just a year ago they were sitting in my green house with torn up baskets. But after restoring them, they seem really happy and showing it with tons of blooms.

Seeing these flowers open I can tell they are a different kind of prickly pear compared to another I have on my property. This one has more red in it, the other is a more flat yellow. Really cool to see two prickly pears that nearly look the same have different petal colors.

I love seeing all the pollen on the petals inside the flower. And the tips of the flower have little spikes to them.. Reminds me of the paddles with their spines as well.

Such pretty flowers, though its hard to get close without getting poked by a thorn. lol

All of these blooms look really amazing, we can see some spent ones that bloomed a few days ago. And a few that are still left to open.

I hope they all get pollinated, that would be cool. Then I should have a rare fruit called "tunas" this is the fruit of the cacti. Normally I would need to travel far to find any for sale. But growing my own will be a nice treat.

Dealing with cacti can be a pain in the ass sometimes, when you plant them you need to be really careful. And you cannot touch most of the plant due to how it has large and small spines that will all poke you. But I think they make up for those issues with some amazing flowers.

All of the cacti out there have amazing looking flowers, some bigger or smaller than others.

I hope they are just as tasty as they are good looking. I have seen many pollinators visit them so far, like wasps, various kinds of bees, beetles, hummingbirds and other cool bugs.

Wonder what other variations these flowers come in, seeing these with their red tinge is pretty, I also like the plain yellow ones. For other cacti species I have seen them in pink so maybe they are some pink prickly pear flowers too.. lol not sure.

With the flowers open completely I have started to see some insects visit them. I do not blame them, they look really tasty.. lol There is a beetle in the back of that flower there just hanging out.

Wonder what else I will see visit the flowers, I will try to capture everything I notice and share it in future posts.

My previous post on this plants bloom: