Your Road Trips Gardener usually runs across prickly pears when they have neither flowers nor fruit.

This plant in McAllen, Texas, was a glorious exception. Our photographer caught the bright yellow blooms in early May last spring at the Quinta Mazatlan.

According to Wikipedia, Opuntia, also known as nopales or paddle cactus, is a genus in the cactus family, Cactaceae. The Spanish word nopales probably derives from the Nahuatl word nopalli — the pads of the plant. Farmed nopales are most often of the species Opuntia ficus-indica, although the pads of almost all Opuntia species are edible.

(Photo ©2012 by Susan McKee)