

















Drooping Prickly Pear

4.6 out of 5 (34 experiences)


Also known as
Drooping Tree Pear, Cochineal Prickly Pear and Barbary Fig
Taxonomy
Opuntia monacantha
Opuntia
Cactaceae
Caryophyllales

How to care for Drooping Prickly Pear
How often to water your Drooping Prickly Pear

every 12
Drooping Prickly Pear needs 0.5 cups of water every 12 when it doesn’t get direct sunlight and is potted in a 5" pot.
Use our water calculator to personalize watering recommendations to your environment or download Greg for more advanced recommendations for all of your plants.
Water 0.5 cups every
12
Finding light for Drooping Prickly Pear in your home

a window
Drooping Prickly Pear love being close to bright, sunny windows 😎.
Place it less than 1ft from a south-facing window to maximize the potential for growth.
Drooping Prickly Pear does not tolerate low-light 🚫.
Select your region to see how the current weather in your area affects the placement of Drooping Prickly Pear in your home 🏡.
How to fertilize Drooping Prickly Pear

Most potting soils come with ample nutrients which plants use to produce new growth.
By the time your plant has depleted the nutrients in its soil it’s likely grown enough to need a larger pot anyway.
To replenish this plant's nutrients, repot your Drooping Prickly Pear after it doubles in size or once a year—whichever comes first.
-
My prickly pear has some white film on a few of the ears. Is this normal? Thanks #DroopingPricklyPear
-
my smol boi has now turned into a long boi🌵💚 #cactus #succulent #greggang
-
smol boi #cactus
-
What’s wrong with my teacup cactus? Truly unsure what’s going on, he used to be very happy and has recently gone white and droopy. Any help is much appreciated!
-
My new baby😄
-
Getting too big! Looking for advice on ✨aesthetics✨ As you hopefully see from the pictures, mah boi is getting too big and its own weight is making him bend... Do ppl usually trim them? I know I can use the cuttings to propagate him but I don't want to end up with a thousand cacti 🤣. Would putting the cuttings on the same pot to make him look 'bushy' be a good idea? #DroopingPricklyPear
-
Base turned yellow My #DroopingPricklyPear has been growing the last couple of months but the base leaves (are they called leaves…?) turned/are turning yellow. We just moved but this happened before the move. At our old place it probably got 1-3 hours direct sun and now it gets more in the current spot. We are in Tucson AZ and water it once ever like 2ish weeks but were watering much less before the summer. Any advice on what I could be doing wrong/where to go from here? Here’s a picture of its location but took other pics in the shade to show the color change.
-
Why is my cactus doing this? #DroopingPricklyPear
-
Wondering is there any way to get the bottom of this to thicken or will the new growth do that?
-
What’s the best way to propagate this cactus? I want to try and propagate my oldest plant but I don’t know how and I really don’t want to experiment with trial and error on this guy.
Care Summary for Drooping Prickly Pear
Drooping Prickly Pear
Greg recommends:

0.5 cups every 12 days

< 1ft from a window

Repot after 2x growth
Based on the 4” pot your plant is in, and that it doesn’t get direct sunlight.

What other plant parents say










Grows fast while still fitting in a small place and doesn’t require a lot of direct sunlight or water. It thrives on just the led light in my ceiling fan that lights the room and the other led light for the room. Doesn’t need s specific grow light trained on it so far and it’s growing fast. Has a 3 new paddles with more coming and it only took a short period of time it seems

