Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe from May 17, 2015-September 13, 2015. Three reds : cochineal, hematite, and cinnabar in the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican ...

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 ...

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 ...

The guts of an insect called the cochineal contain a traditional source of bright red dye -- a dye which has now become a booming industry because of a growing preference for juices and yogurts that ...

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 ...

The cochineal is an insect that feeds off the prickly pear cactus and from which a red pigment commonly known as carmine is extracted whose use dates back to prehistoric times 1,2. It is known that ...