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 ...

Tuna found in the desert? OK, fair enough: that’s tuna, as in the Spanish for prickly pear, the fruit of the nopal. Ken Factor and I have spotted an ancient cactus tree growing close to the veranda ...

Three reds : cochineal, hematite, and cinnabar in the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world / Claudia Brittenham -- Red at court : did the Maya at Bonampak know cochineal? / Mary Miller -- The politics of ...

The cochineal is a tiny insect deeply rooted in the history of Oaxaca, Mexico. Female cochineals spend most of their lives with their heads buried in juicy cactus pads, eating and growing. After ...

Bug enthusiasts will be seeing red at this year’s Arizona Insect Festival, with a new exhibit dedicated to a prickly-pear-loving parasite used to make scarlet dye once prized by everyone from the ...