] 35 °"^ every single one of them is right 



tirely dead. In that state it is so inconspicuous that I must 

 have passed one estabhshed a foot or two from my road- 

 way hundreds of times before I saw it. Yet once a year, 

 usually in June or July, the queen suddenly opens lush, 

 tropical-looking flowers that are pure white, six inches or 

 more across, and heavily fragrant. Tannhauser's pilgrim 

 staff looked hardly less promising and produced less ex- 

 travagant blossoms. Of what sin the queen of the night an- 

 nounces forgiveness I do not know, but since the miracle 

 occurs so frequently I like to think that it may be Adam's 

 and the share all of us have in it. At least the rainbow it- 

 self is no more surprising. 



Though several blooms appear on one plant and some- 

 times successively, each opens in the evening and usually 

 closes next morning. A good many different cacti are fa- 

 miliarly known as "night-blooming cereuses" but this is 

 the only one which grows wild in Arizona. Moreover, the 

 astonishing plant prefers very arid situations — often where 

 nothing else except the unkillable creosote bush will 

 grow. And the moment it chooses to come to life is one 

 when the ground is usually dry as powder, not after a 

 rainy season but toward the end of the driest of the year. 

 What is its secret? 



Dig one up and the answer is obvious. The two or three 

 slender, dry, wand-like stems grow from the top of a huge 

 tuber rather like an oversized turnip. The whole above- 

 ground part of the plant can hardly weigh more than a 

 few ounces, yet the tuber is sometimes enormous and fre- 

 quently weighs between five and fifteen pounds. How 

 many years it takes to grow to this size I do not know, but 

 it must be many. Yet this peculiar plant's solution of the 

 problem of how to live in the desert is plainly a practical 



