148 HOUSE PLANTS 



With very few exceptions indeed cactuses 

 are not grown for their flowers, but when 

 these do appear they are every bit as gorgeous 

 as many of the better known flowering plants, 

 and often indeed, with their intensely glow- 

 ing ruby and purple shades, they rival even 

 the most showy of the orchids. The flowers 

 are also very large in comparison with the 

 plants, and it is no unusual thing to see a 

 little plant three or four inches high in a pot 

 a trifle smaller, carrying two or three flowers, 

 each one of which is of almost the same size 

 as the parent stock. 



Cactuses offer untold opportunities for 

 "house gardens." Unfortunates who are con- 

 fined to city apartments, and whose only oppor- 

 tunity to keep growing plants is confined to 

 the living rooms or shelves in the window, 

 can easily accommodate two or three dozen 

 cactuses where there would hardly be space 

 for one good-sized Boston fern or a couple 

 of starved geraniums. The little plants are 

 never in the way, and can be shifted about 

 easily as necessity demands; and though, of 

 course, hard usage is most undesirable, they 

 will survive the hundred and one accidents 

 and strains upon their vitality that would be 



