How To Remove Prickly Pear Cactus Needles

Cactus spines can be easily removed with a pair of tweezers if you manage to get one or two stuck in the flesh. But what if you end up being one of the unfortunate people who gets stuck with a hand, foot, or butt full of needles? Elmer’s Glue works well for this, just spread a thin layer of it over the surface.

Once the glue has had time to dry completely, allow it to sit for a while before peeling it off. Your skin-piercing needles will rise to the surface and be pulled out by the glue. If you get a good foot- or handful, you might need to repeat a number more times.

Using duct tape is a different choice that I haven’t personally tested but that has received excellent recommendations (should you be out of glue.) However, since you’ll have to apply pressure in order to trap the needles, this seems uncomfortable.

In either case, when you remove the spines, make sure to thoroughly cleanse the area with antibacterial soap. You don’t want the injury to contract an infection.

If portion of the needle does not stick out above the skin, you can find it more challenging. You could want to leave it in your skin for a few days if it isn’t hurting you. The needles are pushed to the top by the body, which makes them simpler to catch.

Call an ambulance if you experience a serious fall and become coated in needles, but in reality, it would be best to stay clear of the cacti altogether.

How are prickly pear cactus spines removed?

Maybe you’re hiking through a small desert canyon twenty miles off the beaten path. Or perhaps you take a wrong turn through your aunt’s succulent garden after two martinis at her cocktail party. Cactus spines can hurt, whether you encounter them in the wild or in a botanical garden, and if you’re not careful, the tiny, hairy ones known as glochids may even endanger your health. The best course of action is to avoid getting into contact with cactus spines, but if that is not possible, here is how to fix the problem.

Cactus spines can be divided into two categories. The majority of cacti have the thick kind, which is easiest treated like a splinter, and the glochids mentioned before, which need to be extracted using a whole other technique.

First, let’s talk about the common spines. Unless you really wail on the plant, as I did here with my bare foot, most cacti’s spines won’t come away from the plant when you brush up against them. The best approach to treat a cactus spine puncture wound that then has the decency to remain attached to its parent plant is to treat it just like you would any other scratch or puncture wound, despite how terrible it is. Ensure the cleanliness of your new piercing. In the wilderness, this might call for moist towels and a product resembling hand sanitizer. If you’re close to a plumbing system, soap and water will do the trick. After that, simply monitor the wound as it recovers to prevent infection.

It’s considerably more likely for thin-spined cacti to break off and stab your skin. Most of the time, you ought to be able to remove these by treating them like a small splinter. If you don’t have tweezers, you should use the blade of a pocketknife to scrape the spines loose. It should go without saying that you should use extreme caution when doing this.

It will be much harder to remove the spines if none of them stick out above the skin. You might be able to locate the spine with a sterile needle if it is close to the surface of a rough patch of skin, on a heel, a kneecap, or another location comparable.

You may rationally opt to leave the spine in place to dissolve gradually over a few weeks if doing so would be too similar to surgery and it isn’t causing you too much discomfort. Many individuals who frequently come into contact with cacti do precisely that. However, putting any foreign body in your skin does dramatically raise your risk of contracting an infection. Additionally, you have no idea what type of terrible stuff may have covered the spine before it became your new home, from bird feces to a decaying carcass.

The best course of action for badly lodged spines that you can’t remove on your own is to have them removed for you by a doctor, skilled First Aid professional, or other knowledgeable individual. The advantage of this is that you can ask them to check the wound for infections and assist you in keeping it clean while you recover.

There can never be just one glochid wound. A glochid that penetrates your skin most likely brought several hundred of its companions with it. Glochids make their way into your flesh to the point where their hilt would be if they had hilts, and because their shafts are barbed, it is more difficult than it should be to remove them. Glochids detach with the slightest wind.

The good news is that only a small number of cacti, including cholla and prickly pears, have glochids. There are a lot of cholla and prickly pears out there, which is bad news. The bad news is that even the best methods for getting rid of glochids on your skin only work approximately 95% of the time, leaving 5% of them behind. And when you rub that patch of skin in the wrong manner, the stupid things hurt a lot more than their size would suggest, creating pains that range from bothersome to terrible.

If you get punctured by several glochids, there is one thing you must do immediately: keep the affected area of your body away from your mouth. Unbelievably often, when someone has a patch of glochids trapped in their hand, they go for their lips and almost instinctively try to suck the irritating spines out of their skin. The risk with this is that it occasionally succeeds in sucking the glochids out of your skin and into your mouth. There, they can become lodged in your tongue, gums, or even your windpipe, where the consequences can be lethal or extremely uncomfortable.

Similarly, you should never touch your face, especially the area around your eyes.

Tweezers are your first line of defense when dealing with glochids, just as you would be with their larger, less irritable relatives. When using tweezers carefully, in bright light, with patience, and good vision, you can remove somewhat more than half of the glochids that are typically transferred during accidents. The fact that the organisms frequently fall off the plant in groups is advantageous; you may be able to remove a few dozen glochids with a single tug.

Adhesives can also be used to mass remove glochids. I’ve successfully covered the troublesome region with duct tape, ripped it off, and used it again. This effectively destroys between a third and a half of the glochids, any local hair, and sporadically the top millimeter of skin.

The best way to remove glochids appears to be a two-step procedure. With tweezers, first get rid of as many as you can. After that, wrap the damaged region in gauze and thoroughly cover it with white glue. Peel off the gauze when the glue has had time to cure. You can remove all but 5% of the glochids using a combination of the two techniques.

Unfortunately, even the most successful removal techniques frequently leave the glochids’ barbed points buried in skin. This doesn’t bother many people or simply makes them slightly uncomfortable. However, these lingering barbules can lead to extremely bothersome dermatitis, which is best treated by scraping the sores open and removing the barbules using dissecting equipment and a microscope.

It goes without saying that admiring glochids from a distance is the best course of action.

The image up top suggests one more cactus spine removal scenario: frequently enough, an entire portion of cholla will lodge in your skin and refuse to come off. It’s best to avoid the urge to use your free hand to try to pull the part away because you’ll almost surely wind up impaling it. More essential, avoid vigorously shaking the limb the cholla stem is clinging to in an attempt to remove it. The cholla has been known to come off at a high rate of speed and strike more than one person in the face.

Instead, pry the part away from you using a foreign item. A huge comb is a common item carried by desert rats who are used to live in cholla country since it is an effective tool for removing the stems of chollas by hand. If you don’t have a comb, get a clean stick—not a cactus skeleton, since those frequently still have spines attached—and use it to carefully peel the stem off by yourself with the least amount of throwing. Then look for glochid areas on your skin and prepare the tweezers and white glue.

Will the cactus’ needles ever erupt?

If you touch a cholla or other comparable cactus, the tiny glochids are very difficult to remove and it’s simple to get dozens or more lodged in your skin. When Puente-Martinez is in this predicament, he prefers to run the affected limb under warm water to sooth the small barbs. The bristles are then removed with a knife, albeit this method may leave the points lodged in your skin. He acknowledges that they will worry you for a while. He has discovered that little tweezers, like those that come with a Swiss Army Knife, are best for extracting difficult glochids; larger tweezers, like those that many people keep in their bathrooms, appear to be less effective in grasping the tiny prickles. For this work, a magnifying lens also comes in helpful. You can also pull the barbs out of your skin by using anything sticky, like duct tape.

Don’t worry if you can’t get all of the spines or barbs out. They typically either fall apart inside your body or are finally pushed out.

Without glue, how do you remove cactus needles?

Much better than duct tape, wax hair remover rubbed across your skin pulls the cacti spines out. The wax sticks to each spine with ease because the spines behave like hairs. Apply and remove the wax according to the directions provided by the product’s manufacturer. You might need to wait a few days before reapplying the wax if you discover that some spines are deeply lodged in your flesh.

Cactus spines remain in the skin for how long?

Glochids that become lodged in the skin cause an acute itching, burning, and stinging sensation, which is swiftly followed by inflammation.

When an allergic reaction occurs, this can sometimes turn into pustules, welts, or blisters in some people.

Glochids can irritate your skin for a very long period if you can’t get them out of your skin straight away (up to nine months).

Fortunately, there are a few methods to remove roughly 95% of the glochids from your skin, although it is very impossible to remove them completely.

Here are three ways to remove objects:

Pull out as many of the offenders as you can with tweezers and a microscope.
Apply duct tape to the troublesome spot, then rip it off.
Apply gauze to the damaged region, then cover it with white glue.

The majority of the tiny, barbed irritants should be eliminated using a combination of these techniques.

If your itchiness, inflammation, and irritation persist, applying ice or a paste made of baking soda and water may ease your discomfort.

If you are one of the unfortunate individuals who experiences long-lasting glochid-induced dermatitis, you should visit your physician for more forceful barb removal and symptom management.

How are glochids removed from prickly pear fruit?

I know this is probably an extremely stupid question, but I was wondering the best way to remove all of the little stickers from the prickly pear in order to pick it when it is in season next year. What is the ideal technique to use them medicinally is another question.

ANSWER:

The easiest way to remove the small fine stickers (called glochids) is to burn them off. Our journal, Native Plants, published a “How to” article on the procedure in its Spring 2005 issue. For the glochids, we advise using a kitchen propane flame similar to the one used to make crème brulee, and a paring knife for the larger thorns. The flame on your gas cooktop could potentially be used to eradicate the glochids. On a grill fork, spear the tuna-shaped prickly pear fruit and turn it over the flame until the glochids are burned off. (I can tell you from terrible personal experience that this won’t work over a candle. Not all of the glochids can be properly burned off by the flame’s heat.)

A method for de-spineing tuna and nopalitos (the cactus pads) without using flames is described in an article from Gourmet Sleuth. Naturally, they peel them extremely meticulously. This page also discusses the medical benefits of decreasing LDL cholesterol. You can use “Opuntia” as a search keyword on the University of Michigan’s Native American Ethnobotany website to find references to additional medicinal and culinary uses for the various parts of the prickly pear cactus.