Q: I have a backyard prickly pear with a cochineal infestation. Does that need to be treated? Do these guys ever go away on their own? Are they even actually a problem for the cactus? A: Cochineal ...

Have you ever heard of cochineal? And I am not referring to the upscale restaurant in Marfa, Texas, but to the small, scale insect native to our area. This insect lives on nopal, prickly pear, Opuntia ...

Some of the prickly pear cacti are encrusted with a tangle of waxy, white silken threads. At first, the patches of white look like fungus or blotches of bleached, dead tissue. But closer inspection ...

Q: I have a prickly pear with an increasing number of chalky-white splotches forming on the pads. Is this a fungus? Can it be treated? Should I just get rid of the plant? (It isn’t very big). A: What ...

Cochineal is a red dye made from a crushed insect native to Latin America. Some vegetarians are distressed that Starbucks uses the dye in some of... Call it the tempest in the Frappuccino. Some ...