While there are many studies of the global influence of crops and plants, this is perhaps the first social history based around a plant in South Africa. Plants are not quite historical actors in their own right, but their properties and potential help to shape human history. In turn, the trail of prickly pear in South Africa has been profoundly affected by the plant’s biological characteristics. Plants such as prickly pear tend to be invisible to those who do not use them, or at least on the peripheries of people's consciousness. This title explains why they were not peripheral to many people in the Eastern Cape, and why a wild, and sometimes invasive, plant from Mexico remains important to African women, such as Nowinile Ngcengele, in shacks and small towns. The central tension at the heart of this social history concerns different and sometimes conflicting human views of prickly pear. Some accepted or enjoyed its presence while others wished to eradicate it. The plant, as the book illustrates, became a scourge to commercial livestock farmers. But for impoverished rural and small town communities of the Eastern Cape it was a godsend. In some places it still provides a significant income for poor black families and especially for women. Debates about prickly pear have played out in unexpected ways over the last century and more. The content of Prickly Pear is based on interviews conducted in the Eastern Cape by the authors, as well as on their observations of how people in the area use and consume the plant.