Deadly Cactus

By Miss Cellania in Everything Else on Feb 28, 2008 at 12:29 pm

A cactus has been found growing in Australia with spines tough enough to penetrate tires! It’s been known to kill koalas, who develop infections because the spines are so difficult to remove.

Once spines of the hudson pear cactus penetrate the skin, they often require pliers to pull them out. It is potentially the worst cactus species to spread in Australia since prickly pear in the 1920s.

Primary Industries Department Biosecurity Queensland land protection officer Jodie Sippel said yesterday there was anecdotal evidence the cactus had caused a fatality at Lightning Ridge in NSW when a person fell into a clump of pear and had a heart attack.

The Hudson pear cactus is an invasive species native to Mexico. Link -via J-Walk Blog

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Sid Morrison
Feb 28th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Sounds like they need to get some RoundUp down there pronto.
bean
Feb 28th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
How did a Mexican cactus start spreading in Australia? Wait, forget I asked.
JC
Feb 28th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Prickly pear! You can make a beer from that!
CheeseDuck
Feb 28th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Ahh! Poor koalas! So cute!
Ali S.
Feb 28th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
The best way to stop drop bears in Australia.
MoonCake
Feb 29th, 2008 at 8:19 am
once again, mother nature rules supreme. i just hope they don’t plan to try and get rid of them because they have to realize that no matter how much human-kind tries to suppress it, nature always wins.
Sid Morrison
Feb 29th, 2008 at 8:32 am
MoonCake-

Unfortunately, the cacti are NOT there as a result of nature, but rather people deliberately putting them there. Australia has a lot of problems with exotic (to them) flora and fauna being brought to the island continent and then running wild on their rather fragile native populations of plants and critters. Rabbits & pigs transplanted from Europe years ago are a big problem for one.

I don’t know the specifics of the cacti, but they may have been brought in for the horticultural trade — that has proven to a big problem for certain invasive plants (like Kudzu & Burning Bush) in the U.S. for example.

Get out the Round Up. Spray ‘em all.
Sid Morrison
Feb 29th, 2008 at 8:36 am
OK, I got curious and looked it up from an Austalian gov’t web site:

“Hudson pear was first detected in Australia in the Lightning Ridge area during the late 1960s. It is believed to have spread from a cactus nursery at Grawin. Some reports state that this process was aided by opal miners who deliberately used the plants to protect their diggings from nocturnal prowlers and thieves but these are unable to be verified.”

There ya go. Some dopey nurseryman brought them in for people to put in their gardens.
Miss Cellania
Feb 29th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Sid, you didn’t have to go to the trouble; all that information was in the linked article.
Carruthers
Feb 29th, 2008 at 11:25 am
The Mexican cactus is there doing the jobs Australian cactii won’t.
Sid Morrison
Feb 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
@Miss-
Well, the article didn’t say the offending nursery was in Grawin
wilson
May 12th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
is Cactus fatality i got sting by it

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