CACTI, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS 59 



from which it gets its Mexican name of chilito. 

 I have heard it called "strawberry" cactus, a puz- 

 zling misnomer. "Fish-hook" is another and better 

 name, arising from the inch-long thorns, curving 

 sharply at the tip; and "pin-cushion" has an evi- 

 dent bearing on the little green cushion stuck full of 

 shining prickles. But as is so often the case, the 

 Spanish word is the most apt. Do the Mexicans love 

 flowers more than we? Perhaps they understand 

 them better, if only because they look at them with 

 more simplicity. 



There is another species of Mamillaria, almost 

 identical in appearance with the foregoing except 

 that its flowers are white, rather like the tube- 

 rose. 



Leaving now the thorny subject of the cacti, the 

 ruling plant and the one of widest distribution over 

 our southern deserts is the creosote bush, Larrea 

 glandulosa. It is a handsome bush, often eight or ten 

 feet high, airy and spreading, with small leaves of 

 brilliant varnished green which give it a pleasing 

 effect in the general scheme of gray. From the tarry 

 feeling and smell of the foliage it gets its common 

 name of "greasewood," or among the Mexicans and 

 Indians, hediondia, meaning "bad-smelling," though 

 the peculiar odor is not to me disagreeable. In spring 

 the plant is set profusely with starry yellow flowers, 

 which mature into little woolly globes as pretty as 

 the blossoms. Over wide tracts of desert the creo- 

 sote is the sole object that breaks the cheerless 

 expanse, and I often felt that the sense of solitude, 

 vastness, and monotony, was deepened by the 



