Vol. VI., No. 38.] BULLETIN oF THE TorREY Boranicat Cius. [New York, Feb., 1878. 
§ 214. Opuntia Ficus-Indica, DC.—It may not be out of place 
to note a few things about the Opuntia Ficus-Indica, of Southern 
Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Its main use in the Orient 
appears to be first to serve as a hedge, and next to furnish food. In 
Cyprus I have seen it in thickets of considerable extent. When 
used to make a hedge, joints of the stem, which people generally 
call the leaves, are stuck in the earth in the fence line; often on the 
top of a stone wall; and sometimes merely laid on the ground. It 
is sure to grow; hardly anything seems to destroy its vitality. In late 
winter, or early spring, the stem sends out its buds, or stem-joints, 
which soon assume the familiar spatulate form, and are, from the 
start, covered with the appressed bracts or leaves. These bracts 
disappear soon after the new stem-joint has acquired firmness and 
shape, and never appear again, except when the joint so formed sends 
out new ones. They are replaced by spines, often, if not generally, 
an inch and a half long; two or three to five or six in a whorl or 
nodule ; which make the hedge impassable to anything from cavalry 
to chickens. Yet not only camels but the Syrian goats feed on the 
green stem-joints, disregarding the spines; and I have now and 
then seen a donkey eating them, too. The new stem-sections or 
joints appear normally along the larger end of the spatula, but 
by no means universally so. Frequently one or more will start from 
the middle of the flat side; and these new ones will in time put 
forth others, in all positions and directions; so that the Opuntia 
growth is always a curious and novel sight. 
The stem-sections vary greatly in size, but generally reach a foot 
or more in length, and eight to ten inches in breadth, with a thick- 
ness of an inch to an inch and a half. I have rarely seen a section 
two feet long, and two inches thick. I refer now to the sections 
when young and green. 
The structure of the young stem-section appears much better 
in this great Opuntia than in the O. Rafinesquti of this country. 
First is the cutis, which I have often peeled off by using a little care, 
and which is white in itself. Underneath is a firm layer, filled with 
chlorophyll, about an eighth of an inch deep, and then the vascular 
body, of a much lighter green. The whole is extremely succulent, 
so much so that one smashing the joints with a stone often gets 
spattered with the juice. When a section is dead, and the inside 
decayed out, the cutis often remains like a bag of fine, stiff parch- 
ment, and rather tougher than paper. 
Regularly, when a section has put forth new ones, and these new 
ones again, it stiffens up to bear the added weight and leverage. 
This it does by increasing in size in all directions, but chiefly in 
thickness, and at the same time becoming woody. The woody fibres 
are a.loosely, and somewhat tangled reticulated mass; which be- 
come more numerous, somewhat finer, and firmer, with age and size. 
The lower joints gradually become quite round and cylindrical, the 
weaker branches give way to weight or accident—the wind and 
other causes breaking off the little joints—and the whole plant be- 
