Poisonous Thinking

I remember when I first learned about the cochineal insect years ago because it was one of those events that represents a fundamental shift in the way a person's eyes open to the unknown-known.  We had seen prickly pear cactus pads since the earliest days of childhood, and though most of them had the obvious fuzzy white fungus-looking stuff growing on them, I had never thought that I was seeing it.  I didn't think that that I wasn't seeing it--I just didn't think that I was seeing it.  We often cannot see what we've been seeing until we know what it is we are seeing.  But I cannot see cactus of Opuntia, the genus of paddle cactus that include our common prickly pears which bloom here at the end of April and beginning of May, without seeing the cochineal.  (Similarly, our friend Harlin says that people often can't see the beauty of a thing unless someone tells them that the thing can be considered beautiful.  We'll continue this idea soon enough, but first a few more words about small insects and a thorny cactus, neither of which will rank high on lists of anything beautiful.)

Very likely Texas Prickly Pear (Opuntia lindheimeri)

Within the flower of Opuntia, we see the green stigma of the pistil

surrounded by numerous yellow-white anthers of the stamen.

Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Core eudicots
Order:	Caryophyllales
Family:	Cactaceae
Subfamily:	Opuntioideae
Tribe:	Opuntieae
Genus:	Opuntia

Cochineal insect (white) thriving on a pad of Opuntia cactus that grows among

limestone boulders on Whitman's Rough above Priest Cave

     

Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Homoptera
Superfamily:	Coccoidea
Family:	Dactylopiidae
Genus:	Dactylopius
Species:	D. coccus

Cochineal farming using tiny baskets called Zapotec nests in which

the female insects live until they come out onto the cactus pads to

mate with males.  When they are about three months old, they are gathered

up by hand and smushed to make the valuable dye.  70,000 insects make a pound of dye.

The fruit of these prickly pears tastes like watermelon to me.  In Mexico the fruit is called tuna.

Mexico's coat of arms minus any cochineal insect.

On a similar subject, I thought my guts were going to explode either out my mouth or ass last week.  That's after I ate part of a beautifully poisonous berry under The Oak.  First, here it is.

Solanum triquetrum

One has to know that this plant and its tiny red fruit do look something like the famous chili pequin that is of the genus Capsicum in the Solanaceae family.  This is the famous nightshade family of plants, containing many poisonous plants or plant parts.  Potatoes, tomatoes, chilis, etc.  I wanted so badly for the fruit to be spicy hot.  But when I got the thing in my mouth, I knew instantly it wasn't what I wanted it to be.  Spitting and mouth-rinsing perhaps helped, but for several hours thereafter, I began to get hints at why it might be called nightshade.  The nausea and dizziness passed, and I was able to enjoy an evening of cold beer and grilled food around a fire and with good friends.  Fireflies and creek sounds resumed their lovely act. Now, we could go on about some "lesson" in look-alikes or how we so desperately want something to be what we want it to be and how poisonous this behavior turns out sometimes. But we won't go there.