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Opuntia stricta is a species of large cactus that is endemic to the subtropical and tropical coastal areas of the Americas, especially around the Caribbean and the lower East Coast of the United States. Common names include erect prickly pear and nopal estricto (Spanish language). The first description as Cactus strictus was published in 1803 by Adrian Hardy Haworth. In 1812 he moved the species to the genus Opuntia.
The yellow to yellowish orange flowers, which are solitary and formed by numerous membranous parts, reach a length of and a diameter of . The flowers are ephemeral and melliferous. The purple-red, smooth fruits are inverted-egg-shaped and tapered at the base. They are inches long and covered with plenty of glochids and are more or less pyriform, always purple in color, in length and contain from 60 to 180 seeds (which may remain viable for more than 10 years), yellow to light brown, incorporated into the fruit pulp. As fruits are appreciated by birds and mammals, their seeds are dispersed by animals. The mucilage inside the leaves is used to treat burns and . It is edible in the same way as fruits.Bernard Suprin, Arabian plants in New Caledonia, Noumea, Editions Photosynthesis2013, 382 p. ( ), p. 188
In Sri Lanka it has overgrown a long coastal area between Hambantota and Yala National Park, especially in Bundala National Park, a Ramsar wetland site. It has overgrown several hundreds of hectares (acres) of sand dune areas and adjoining scrub forests and pasture lands. Some areas are so densely covered that they are completely inaccessible for humans and animals. The seeds are spread by macaque monkeys, and perhaps other animals and birds that eat the large fruits. It is also spread by people cutting down the cactus but leaving the cuttings, which then re-sprout where they have fallen. No control measures have been carried out except some costly manual removal of about on the dunes near Bundala village. The cactus is due to invade Yala National Park.Lalith Gunasekera, Invasive Plants: A guide to the identification of the most invasive plants of Sri Lanka, Colombo 2009, pp. 84–85. A biodiversity status profile of Bundala National Park : a Ramsar national wetland of Sri Lanka Bambaradeniya, Channa N.B.; Ekanayake, S.P.; Fernando, R.H.S.S.; Perera, W.P.N.; Somaweera, R. Colombo : IUCN Sri Lanka, 2002.
The opposite problem has been encountered in Texas, where Cactoblastis cactorum was first found in Brazoria County in 2017. This species of moth is highly destructive to this (and other) species of cactus native to the southern United States and northern Mexico.
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