Yes, spring bloom. Now they have made fruit which has been getting ripe for some time. It's that fruit which folks use to make prickly pear jelly. It's quite good. My nephew took a load off last year to make mead. I haven't heard how that turned out. The plant is wicked to handle. Covered in big sharp strong thorns which have a kajillion tiny hair like thorns at the base of each thorn. Sort of double duty protection I guess. It's impossible to handle them without getting some of the tiny ones embedded and they are extremely difficult to find and remove. The big ones make soft shoes like sneakers a bad choice to wear around them unless you are really watchful of your foot movement. But the fruit especially, and to a lesser extent the leaves, are food to a lot of wildlife. That scatters the seeds and they thrive in drought conditions taking advantage of other plant growth being diminished. A few would be okay, but they are aggressive on range land when conditions are right. When they are growing thickly with numerous large growing plants, they provide cover for many animals. That includes feral hogs which is also not a good thing. In my area, the balance has shifted and they are a bad plant. The blooms are really beautiful, though.
