Prickly Pear used as a rooting aid?

Does anyone have any experience on using prickly pear to propagate trees? I believe the idea is to cut a slit into a prickly pear, and inserting the scion to root in it.

I do not, but boy that seems like a neat idea! The nopal is this wet, fleshy sack of nutrients surrounded by a tough, protective membrane that's going to prevent much drying. I wonder if there are also rooting hormones present -- seems like a reasonable hypothesis given how easy it is to grow new plants by just putting the nopal on/in sandy soil. And do the new roots of the cutting have an easy time getting out of the nopal...I guess I'd worry a little about root-binding in there.

I have heard of aiding the rooting of cuttings by utilizing Aloe Vera gel but I have not heard of Prickly Pear.

I wonder if they have similar mechanisms that other plants benefit from?

It seems to me that Prickly Pear would work as a rooting hormone since aloe vera is a known rooting agents. Common /similar type secretions...

I would love to find out if you try this experiment and what your results are.

What a neat idea! Cuttings need a moist but not too wet environment to root, so I guess the nopales would provide that beautifully. Definitely sounds worth a try.....

nopales pads

image source

Looking at the pads, I guess you would insert the cuttings at the edge to get a good coverage, it might be tricky because they seem quite thin ...Hmm, I think I'd be inclined to then bury the nopales, either in pots containing compost, or even in the ground where you want the resulting plants.
Would there be a chance that the nopales would root also?

It never occurred to me that prickly pear might have a rooting hormone in their leaves.  It's possible though because if you mow or plow over prickly pear it spreads.  Many of the leaves or pieces of leaves will root down and you have more clumps started.  We once had a neighbor chisel a pasture on contour to help water infiltration.  It worked but in a couple years it had a terrible prickly pear infestation.

I have had great luck using aloe for cuttings. It’s easy to keep some around so what I always use. I don’t have easy access to prickly pear but now I’ll definitely try that too, the next time I get my hands on some.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Apparently prickly pear is the perfect permaculture plant for parched places, how cool that it could have this other function too!

Great for vegetable, fruit, dyes, living predator fences, erosion control, medicine and drought insurance. Talk about stacking functions!

I wonder if I could find a prickly pear plant to grow as a house plant.. :)

Stumbled on a video that might be of value to this topic. This is more-so for planting trees but perhaps someone might be inspired to experiment with the idea.