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 ...