California: Eat your way through the cactus at Bancroft Garden tour

If you’ve never eaten what some call a cactus apple, you’ve likely seen one. It’s the ruby red fruit that sprouts from prickly pear, or opuntia, cactus.

These seemingly unapproachable fruits are part of an edible tour in October of the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Visitors to the garden, about 25 miles east of San Francisco, will have an opportunity to nibble palm and dragon fruit as well as other cactus fruit during the tour.

They will also be treated to samples of pineapple guava and berries from a strawberry tree (this Mediterranean tree produces red berries you can eat, but they aren’t really strawberries) from Ruth Bancroft’s private garden, an area usually closed to the public.

Bancroft started the garden in 1972 on part of what was once a walnut and fruit farm.

On the roughly 3-acre site, she planted thousands of succulents and pioneered the idea of a “dry” or water-conserving garden. It opened to the public in the 1990s (some of her original plants still thrive) and remains known for its collection of aloes, agaves and yuccas.

If the name Bancroft sounds familiar, it should. Her husband, Philip Bancroft Jr., was a historian who sold his collection of books about the American West to the University of California. The library at UC Berkeley still bears his name.

The garden is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. The Prickly Fruit Tasting Tour is 1:30-3 p.m. Oct. 18 and costs $20 per person. Reservations are required.

Info: The Ruth Bancroft Garden, (925) 944-9352