74 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



branches, like a huge candelbrum, it was usually possible to 

 find at least a spiny, many-branched cholla, the most unmiti- 

 gatedly vicious of all cacti, or a flat-leaved, harmless opuntia 

 of the prickly pear species. At the time of our journey the 

 cacti were in blossom to our great delight. It would be hard 

 to find any flowers more beautiful than those which form a 

 coronet of white around the tops of the giant cacti and produce 

 a many-seeded fig-like fruit, one of the staples of the diet of 

 the Indian. The slender bells, some three inches long, are not 

 pure white but of a slightly creamy tint. Heavy masses of 

 yellow stamens form a pleasing contrast to the pale petals, es- 

 pecially when a shiny black bee is burrowing for honey. The 

 petals have a peculiarly soft quality, not sticky, but as if the 

 surface had actual depth. The low-growing prickly pear is 

 by no means so aristocratic as the suhuaro, but its wide-open 

 yellow blossoms, shading sometimes to lemon and sometimes 

 to orange, have a very friendly quality. In the flowering 

 season no cacti are so interesting as two closely similar species 

 w^hich have no common name but are known to scientists as 

 Opuntia versicolor and Opuntia spinosior. They are scraggly 

 branched forms from three to six feet high, with stems of many 

 shades from purple to green. Ordinarily they are unattractive, 

 but when the flowers come out, one is tempted to spend hours 

 in wandering from one to another to see what the color will 

 be. On some plants the flowers are almost green, on others 

 pale yellow, orange or brown. And as if this were not 

 enough, one soon finds plants whose blossoms are bright pink 

 or purple or varying shades of red. A single plant never has 

 flowers of more than one color but one may look at scores of 

 different plants and scarcely find two bearing the same shade. 

 The cactus has a pronouncedly archaic appearance. It 

 almost seems as it were born with the wrinkles of age in its 

 plump body. All its life it has a somewhat superior air as if 

 its hoard of water were some precious heirloom handed down 

 through countless generations. Perhaps it would seem less 



