65 Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 



of its ripened fruit. The Cactus has a character wholly different 

 from its exterior appearance, and the Indians performed ancient 

 ceremonies to honor the Good Spirit of certain kinds at the season 

 of their harvest. The fruit of these plants was always a staple 

 food with the Indians and is much used at the present time by Mexi- 

 can peons. The fruits called Tunas are the ones most used, and 

 are usually pulpy and quite sweet, but contain many small, hard 

 seeds, which were also used by Indians, being ground into a meal 

 and cooked as a mush. 



The Cacti not only supplied food to the desert people, but were 

 famous as a water supply in those arid regions ; and at least three 

 varieties (Echinocactus cylindracus, etc.) are known as bisnagas 

 or vegetable water barrels. These barrel-like plants have a pulpy 

 interior, which, when macerated, yields a quart or more of refresh- 

 ing, acid-like liquor, which has saved the lives of many wanderers 

 in that lonely land. The half wild horses of the desert regions 

 knew this secret and would kick these fiercely barbed melons to 

 pieces to obtain the pulpy mass of the interior, which was both food 

 and drink to them. This species (although it is not the most im- 

 portant of the genera by any means) plays many parts in the life 

 of the desert. It formed the favorite cooking utensil of desert 

 Indians, who hollowed out the large, cylindrical plants, in which 

 they cooked with the aid of hot stones and water, if it could be 

 obtained, or with the cactus liquid, the various cacti seeds which 

 they had ground into a meal and which was often a staple article 

 of diet with them. The pulp of this cactus, which resembles green 

 watermelon, now furnishes the basis of the famous cactus candy, a 

 favorite confection of the southland. In bloom, the Barrel Cactus 

 (Echinocactus} is crowned with a circlet of pretty greenish yellow 

 (or sometimes reddish green), cup-shaped flowers, which have 

 found for them a common name of "Turk's Head" or "Turban 

 Cactus." 



There are still remnants of the ancient cactus hedges which 

 were planted around the old missions by the Franciscan Friars for 

 protection from the hostile Indians. Perhaps the good Friars 

 learned this excellent usage from certain small denizens of the 

 desert, who gather the fallen prickly joints of some of the Opuntia 

 species to form a barricade around their burrows to discourage 

 snakes, wildcats, coyotes and other enemies. 



The jointed Cactus (Opuntia) is the largest group of the plant 

 family to be found in the State and numbers about twenty species 

 growing from the sea coast inland through the southland and north- 

 ward along the eastern Sierras into Oregon. There are two kinds, 

 most commonly distinguished as the Nopal or Tuna, which has 

 flattened, leaf-like joints, and- the Cholla (pronounced choy'a), which 

 has cylindrical joints, and fruit which is seldom used, because of 

 the unpleasant taste. The next in number are the globe-shaped and 

 vertically ribbed Indian Melons (Echinocactus), which have about 

 seven species from the coast to the interior. The name Echino is 

 Latin and is derived from the Greek, meaning a prickly thing like 

 a hedgehog or sea urchin. The word Cactus is also from the Greek 



