CACTACE^E CACTUS FAMILY 



Opuntia vulgar is, Mill. 



Yellow Cactus, Barberry, 



Prickly Pear, Devil' s-tongue. 

 June- August Indian Fig. 



Opuntia: a name given by Theophrastus, but originally 



belonging to some different plant. 

 Vulgaris: Latin for frequent or common. 



THE PREFERRED HABITAT: beach sand. 



THE PLANT: prostrate or slightly erect; the stem much 

 branched, light green, copiously armed with very short 

 bristles, and very fleshy. 



THE LEAVES: minute; deciduous; when present generally 

 ovate. 



THE FLOWERS : large, showy, solitary, usually with a reddish 

 centre, yellow and tending to white when faded, lasting but 

 little more than a day. 



THE FRUIT: a berry. 



The presence on Nantucket beaches of this "queer" 

 plant is very interesting from the point of view of its dis- 

 tribution, which is given in Gray's Botany (7th edition) as 

 Nantucket to South Carolina, near the Coast; Falls of the 

 Potomac. But the plant is not dependent on its distribu- 

 tion to make it interesting; it is that "per se" also. For 

 one reason, no better example than this can be found of 

 water storage by beach plants. One plant, which had 

 been neglected in the house for over a year, without even 

 being watered, at the end of that time actually put out new 

 leaves! To enable them to store up their water supply, 

 extreme fleshiness has been given to the stems. Through 



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