The Empire 

 of the Cactuses 



The Sonoran and Red Deserts 



It is night. The heat is still glutinous and no wind stirs. The 

 whirling "deedees" have died away to the east as the glowing 

 orange orb of the sun has drifted to the west in a purple miasma. 

 The dust that filled the air in a swirling curtain has also mirac- 

 ulously vanished and, after a period of intense silence and utter 

 blackness, some seemingly mechanically constructed insect has 

 started up like a lone buzz saw. Now the moon comes sailing 

 out over the nearby dry mountains. It has been heralded by the 

 aerial glow that we might expect, but one minute it is utterly 

 dark, the next, platinum beams are fingering out over the endless 

 plain and filtering through desiccated ocotillos and the stark, 

 poxed skeletons of things that were once fleshy and green. 

 Rapidly, a fairyland comes into being. 



The desert can be a dreadful place and it can be both ugly 

 and boring — just an endless array of stones and coarse, colorless 

 dust. At other times, parts of it can be extremely beautiful and 

 soft. Then sometimes come fantastically painted scenes, so gaudy 

 that they upset the uninitiated but bring ineffable peace to those 

 who know them. Even under a glaring noonday sun, the bare 

 bones of the deserts seen through a shimmering curtain of "ning- 

 ning" may seem glorious to some and may indeed contain most 

 wondrous sigats, but never under such conditions do they 

 display the beauty they disclose by night. Under the light of the 

 moon they come alive in a quite unearthly way. 



Many people believe that deserts represent nature's lost 

 causes — those parts of the land surface of the earth where she 

 has simply given up the struggle. Even many of those who have 

 visited these areas feel this way, and see nothing but the bare 

 rocks and stones, the grit and the dust, and the seemingly lifeless 

 vegetation. This is sad, for the deserts are places of somewhat 

 ebullient life, even if it be only of marching sand dunes and 

 rocks that explode in the night. Moreover, the seemingly lifeless 

 vegetation is a miracle of vitality that, in its way, rivals the 

 tangled, seething competition of the tall equatorial forests. Plants 

 — and animals — not only survive but thrive here in conditions 

 that would extinguish those of more salubrious climes. Here, 

 both have developed more extraordinary aids to survival than 

 anywhere else, and as a result their over-all tonnage and variety 

 is remarkable. 



The most outstanding of these plants in our hemisphere are 

 members of the family of the cactuses. But these, whidi are not 

 by any means all desert plants, are not the only ones that have 

 developed in a special way to cope with the extreme environ- 

 ment. In our western deserts representatives of many families of 

 plants have done this. Notable among them are the lilies, in the 



form of the yuccas such as the Joshua Tree and the Spanish 

 Dagger, and the agaves, which include the Century Plant. There 

 are also the ocotillos, which are represented here by spiny-stem- 

 med cactus-like shrubs with many long, slender, whiplike stems 

 that flaunt little scalelike green leaves only after rain but that 

 bear beautiful scarlet blooms at the tips of their stems every 

 spring. There are also places within the confines of the Desert 

 Belt where true trees are found; the mesquites, the palos verdes 

 with their green trunks and branches, and the thorny Ironwood. 

 These, however, are more specifically plants of the scrublands. 



Cactuses form a family of plants of unique habits and of 

 exclusively New World origin. They have now been carried all 

 over the world as ornamental garden and household plants, and 

 some species have become widely established in Australia, 

 Hawaii, Palestine and other Mediterranean countries, and else- 

 where. There are over sixteen hundred known species of cac- 

 tuses, which range from the Strait of Magellan to Canada. At 

 least one of them is now found growing wild in every state in 

 the union except Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Some 

 grow on forest trees in wet tropical jungles, and some in the 

 Everglades in southern Florida grow with their roots in brackish 

 water. But their headquarters are the true Hot Deserts, notably 

 that belt in the northern half of the western hemisphere; while 

 many species now spread over both the North and South Scrub 

 Belts in both halves of the western hemisphere. About three 

 hundred species are indigenous to the United States, but nearly 

 three-quarters — or some twelve hundred kinds — are found within 

 the confines of the North American continent as defined in 

 this book. Cactuses are "traveling" plants in that bits of them, 

 aided by their hooks and spines, can readily be transported long 

 distances by animals, and their seeds may be carried by birds. 

 They will take root in a surprisingly wide variety of climatic 

 conditions. They are hardy, and they have developed methods 

 for surviving frost that are almost as efficient as those which 

 they possess for overcoming prolonged droughts. 



Though cactuses are found over a wide area of our Southwest, 

 in the driest parts of Texas, and in the East Chaparral and all 

 over Mexico in great profusion, their headquarters are in these 

 Sonoran Deserts. Here they attain their greatest size and 

 dominate not only the vegetation but the whole landscape. They 

 come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, arrayed with 

 all manner of plumes, hooks, spikes, spines, scales, prickles, 

 hairs, and bristles. Once a year they burst into gorgeous bloom. 

 Taking them as a group, the beauty and color of their flowers 

 probably surpasses that of all other forms of plant life. Take 

 away the cactuses and this province would indeed be a dreary, 

 sterile place, and probably a true desert throughout its length, 

 for without them much of the other vegetation could not survive 

 and most of the fauna would not be present. Thus a description 

 of this province becomes almost synonymous with an introduc- 

 tion to the cactus family. The cactuses may legitimately — if not 

 strictly scientifically — be divided into five great groups: the 

 Opuntias, the Barrels, the Hedgehogs, the Pincushions, and the 

 Cereuses (Cereus-es) or Cerei. 



The Opuntias are divided into two distinct and well-known 

 types called the Chollas (pronounced choiyas) and the Prickly 

 Pears. These are the jointed cactuses that often form bushes or 

 trees; but Chollas have stems that are round in section whereas 

 the Prickly Pears are oblong, each section forming an oval "pad." 



A Century Plant (Agave america), a kind of aloe related 

 to that from which sisal hemp or henequen is made. The 

 plant's flower is seen in the center. 



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