Yeah that's what I meant, and that makes sense. It would be a more informative comparison to look at the consistency of two different cacti, one that yields crystals and one that yields oil, given the same amount of water. The stiffer one would probably hold onto its water better during extraction

I'm thinking if the mucilage/water holding capacity thing is correct, water could be pulled out in the first few runs and the cactus paste could end up too dry to extract any more product, which would result in low yield and wet solvent. Attached a plot of how I think that behavior would look. Trouble is figuring out a way to test that...the why probably doesn't matter as much as how to deal with it anyway.