Opuntia santarita Santa Rita Purple Prickly Pear Cactus

Santa Rita Prickly Pear: Purple Pads with Desert Character

Santa Rita Prickly Pear (Opuntia santarita) brings sculptural shape and changing color to a cactus collection. Its broad, rounded pads can deepen to purple in cooler weather, then soften toward blue-gray as temperatures rise.

• 💜 Seasonal purple tones vary with the plant and growing conditions
• 🌼 Bright yellow flowers may appear on established plants in spring
• 🌵 Broad, upright pads create a bold desert-garden accent
• ☀️ Sun-loving growth suits bright, dry landscapes with excellent drainage

Choose Santa Rita for an outdoor cactus display or roomy container where its colorful pads have space to develop. Position it away from busy paths so you can enjoy its shape without brushing against the glochids.

Care Tips

Light: Full sun supports strong growth and color. Acclimate plants gradually when moving from shade.

Water: Allow soil to dry between waterings. Newly planted specimens need more attention while roots establish; established landscape plants need very little supplemental water. Avoid daily watering.

Soil: Use sharply drained soil or a gritty cactus mix.

Potting: Choose a stable container with drainage holes and room for the roots; keep the pad base above soggy soil.

Temperature: Established landscape plants can tolerate cold to about 15°F (-9°C) in suitable conditions. Container roots are more exposed; shelter pots from severe freezes and winter wet.

Humidity: Dry air and good airflow suit this desert cactus.

Handling: Avoid bare-hand contact. Tiny barbed glochids can irritate skin even where long spines are absent; use suitable tools and keep away from children and pets.

Shipping & Handling

• The Santa Rita / 2.5 Inch Cutting option is shipped unrooted, without pot or soil.
• The rooted 2 Inch Santa Rita Prickly Pear plants are shipped with the pot and soil
• The 4 Inch and larger plants are shipped bare roots without the pot and soil:
• We commit to shipping bare roots, which requires more time and labor, and provide excellent quality and service to our customers - see Benefits of Shipping Bare Roots
• You will receive a very similar plant to the one shown in the photos; shape and color may vary
  
• Ship within USA & its outlying territories only
• Please visit Order Processing & Shipping info page for additional details
  

Care Instructions

Please visit our Succulent Care info page for more details.

To ensure the health of succulents, it is important to plant them in porous, well-draining soil. Succulents require little watering, but don't like to sit in wet soil. To create an adequate cactus mix, simply add pumice, perlite, or grit to cactus soil to provide the proper drainage.

Make sure to leave drought periods between waterings to prevent the plant from water-logging.

Weather Conditions

• When ordering, be mindful that living succulents can be damaged by the cold weather.
• If you live in an area that is below 40°F, please add a shipping warmer to your order or consider purchasing plant until the weather is more suitable.
• Shipping Warmer: 72+ Hours Heat Packs available for $2.00 each

Keywords: Santa Rita prickly pear, Opuntia santarita, purple cactus, desert garden, paddle cactus

Packaging & Handling

Vast majority of our plants shown in 4 Inch pot and above are shipped bare roots (See below for more details).

Most plants shown in 2 Inch pots are shipped in their original plastic pots with soil because they are small and are less subject to damaging during transit.

We carefully wrap each plant with wrapping paper and place them securely inside the box. Then, we fill the remaining space in the box with newsprint paper, air pillows, or crinkle paper to ensure the plants don't move around during shipping, and hence minimize shipping shock.

Shipping with Pots

The plants listed below are shipped with the pot and soil to ensure that they can stay healthy through transit:

• Most plants shown in 2 Inch pot (exclusion applies, some 2 Inch plants are shipped bare root to provide better protection)
• String of Pearls in 2 Inch and 4 Inch pot
• Variegated String of Pearls
• String of Hearts
• Variegated String of Hearts
• Learn More

Shipping Bare Roots

Shipping bare roots and soft paper wrapping provide the following benefits:

• Prevent broken parts, fracture, scuffing, and fallen nodes/leaves
• Minimize residual moisture within the package
• Prevent soil getting into the leaves and causing a big mess
• Reduce shipping weight and the cost that our customers pay

Shipping Practices

In order for our plants to arrive at your front door in great condition, we have established the following shipping practices to ensure a safe arrival: 

• The succulents are removed from their nursery pots, stripped of their soil, and set aside to dry if necessary.
• Each succulent is then wrapped in paper to protect them during transit. It serves two purposes; a) to protect the plants from one another and b) to wick away any residual moisture from the root system.
• The wrapped plants are then packed into a cardboard shipping box. The voids within the box are filled with eco-friendly newspaper and magazine paper, in order to prevent movement of the plants within the box, and hence minimize shipping shock.

While this process requires a significant time investment, we feel it's the best way to demonstrate our commitment to delivering high-quality plants in great condition.

We handpick the succulents and only ship out the most beautiful and healthy specimens. If you have any concern about the health and shape of your plants, please contact us immediately. We are always here to answer your questions.

Shipping Rates

Our shipping rates are calculated based on the total weight of purchased items. Free Shipping is available when your order total is $49 or higher.

If your order is over 1 lb, the shipping rates will be charged at the next full pound rounded up. For example, if the current items in your cart weigh 1.2 lb, you could add more plants to your cart up to a total weight of 2 lb without incurring extra shipping cost.

Here are some weight range for different sizes of plants. The actual weight for each item might vary:

2 Inch Plants - 0.15 - 0.2 lb each

4 Inch Plants - 0.3 - 0.4 lb each

6 Inch Plants - 0.5 - 0.7 lb each

8 Inch Plants - 0.7 - 1.2 lb each

Order Processing

Your plant order will ship within 1 to 3 business days from your purchase date. We thank you for your patience as we are always working as hard as possible to pack and ship your orders.

Processing times vary based on weekend closures, seasonal sales, inventory restocking, and order volume. Additionally, we often must allow plants to dry before packaging to ensure they remain healthy during transit. If you need your order urgently, please email support@succulentsdepot.com to confirm current handling times before making your purchase.

Combined Shipping

If you place multiple orders within a short time frame, we may combine your orders and ship all your items in one package. A refund is not automatically given because each order requires time and labor to process, and in many occasions, combined shipping cost is only marginally lower because of the increase in shipping weight or possible shipping upgrade.

Shipping Methods and Transit Time

We ship Monday through Friday, year-round, using major carriers including DHL, USPS, GOFO Express, UPS, and FedEx.

You could select a preferred shipping method at checkout. Upgraded shipping is also available.

Transit times are estimates and we have no control over packages once they're with the carrier. Don't panic if it takes longer — succulents are very resilient and handle shipping durations of a week to 10 days easily.

Receiving and Opening Your Package

Open the box immediately upon arrival. Plants may look slightly dull or stressed from being in a dark box — that's normal.

Carefully and gently remove the packing materials. Don't put the plants in direct sunlight immediately. These are greenhouse grown succulents, so they need to acclimate to sunlight gradually. Keep them in shade or indirect sunlight, and slowly introduce them to direct sunlight if desired.

Give the plants a few days to recover, then repot if necessary and start watering. If you receive the plants bare root, immediately pot them in succulent and cactus soil mix, then follow the same instructions above. The plants should perk up after getting a good soak from watering.

Visit our Succulent Care page for additional info and tips.

Shipping in Summer

It is the responsibility of customers residing in areas subject to extreme heat waves to plan the shipments until the weather is safe for shipping. Please leave a note in your order or contact us to postpone or reschedule your shipments. Extremely high temperature can cause the plants to rot and die. Make sure to retrieve the packages as soon as they are delivered. Don't let the packages sit under direct sunlight for more than an hour.

⚠️ Succulents Depot is not responsible for damage done to plants by extreme weather. 

Shipping in Winter

It is the responsibility of customers residing in areas subject to freezing weather to purchase a Heat Pack (72, 96, or 120 hour shipping warmer). While heat packs do not guarantee protection from frost, they will help prevent damage from occurring. Make sure to retrieve the packages as soon as they are delivered. Don't let the packages sit under direct sunlight for more than an hour.

Heat Packs can be ordered here: 

https://www.succulentsdepot.com/products/uniheat-heat-pack

⚠️ Succulents Depot is not responsible for damage done to plants by extreme weather. 

Quality Guarantee

We provide Quality Guarantee for our items for 14 days from the date of delivery. If you have any concerns about the quality and condition of the items when they arrived, please contact us within 14 days of delivery. You must submit photos that clearly reflect the condition of the items.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us: support@succulentsdepot.com

You could report your order issues here:

https://www.succulentsdepot.com/apps/redo/returns-portal/orders 

We only ship out beautiful and healthy plants that are disease free and of good quality. That being said, we cannot control what happens to your order during transit.

Please track your package and open it immediately upon arrival.  Fragile plants such as bear paw, baby toe, etc. may break or lose a few of their leaves during transport.

If you receive your package and are not satisfied, or if your plants are severely damaged, please message us immediately. We'll try our best to accommodate you.

Covered by Quality Guarantee:

• No roots
• Root rot
• Disease
• Broken stems
• Pest infestation (mealy bug, aphids, scale, etc)
• Numerous broken or missing leaves
• Incorrect or missing plant or product
• Visible damage to pots, planters, or other accessories

Not Covered by Quality Guarantee (Partial credits may be granted subject to our review and approval):

• Damaged items or missing parts for reasons not due to our error
• Dried or wilted bottom leaves (naturally occurring in all plants; can be easily pulled off without damaging the plant)
• Dried or wilted flowers / blooms (naturally occurring in all plants; can be easily pulled off without damaging the plant)
• Potting soil on leaves (easily washed off with first watering)
• Potting soil displaced or spilled from the pots or plant roots
• A couple of broken, missing, or wilted leaves, as long as 75% or more healthy leaves remain intact
• Minor color / shape differences from photograph in product listings (many succulents change color / shape continuously)
• Items damaged due to cold weather and a heat pack / shipping warmer is not purchased
• Repotted plants that were shipped in the original nursery pot
• Plants that fell off from the original nursery pot with stems and roots being intact and 75% or more healthy leaves remain intact
• Minor fungas gnats infestation
• Assorted products that differ from product photograph (EG: collections and trays where selection is our choice)
• Package not received claims when proof of delivery is provided by the postal carrier
• Packages that arrive late because of shipping delay with the carrier
• Packages that are forwarded to a different address than the designated shipping address
• Any issues with the plants after 14 days of delivery

Plants may be slightly larger or smaller than the pot they are grown in, depending on availability or time of year. Sedums such as Cherry Tart and Lime Zinger are dormant in the winter, i.e. they wilt, start dropping leaves, and look dead. It's simply a survival mechanism that help succulents stay alive over the cold winter and gear up for warmer days ahead.

Refunds

We gladly offer refund, store credit, or replacements for your orders for reasons such as items arrived damaged, items not as described, items missing or not received, wrong items received, etc.

You could report your order issues here:

https://www.succulentsdepot.com/apps/redo/returns-portal/orders 

If you have any issues with your plant order, please contact us within 14 days of delivery: support@succulentsdepot.com

Please provide your order number and photos of the items and the package. If the items are damaged, you must submit photos that clearly reflect the condition of the items and/or damage to the shipping box.

Once your refund request is received, reviewed, and approved, your refund will be processed promptly. A credit will automatically be applied to your credit card or original method of payment, within a certain amount of days.

Late or missing refunds (if applicable)

If you haven’t received a refund yet, first check your bank account again. 
Then contact your credit card company, it may take some time before your refund is officially posted. 
Next contact your bank. There is often some processing time before a refund is posted. 
If you’ve done all of this and you still have not received your refund yet, please contact us at support@succulentsdepot.com.

Gifts

If the item was marked as a gift when purchased and shipped directly to you, if your order qualifies for a credit through our Quality Guarantee, you’ll receive a gift credit through email.

Replacement (if applicable)

We only replace items if they are defective or damaged. You don't need to ship the original items back to use. Please contact us at support@succulentsdepot.com to submit your replacement inquiry.