38 THE FANTASTIC CLAN 



cream-white short stout spines, and one or two pale red 

 central thorns with purplish brown curved tips and yellow 

 bulbous bases; Into this harmony of color come the flowers 

 In bloom, twenty-five or more cream-colored or light yellow 

 petals recurving Into a lovely cornucopia effect, very pretty 

 in the dazzling sun of spring and summer on the desert. 

 When injured by small rodents or other enemies, Mac- 

 Dougalii yields a thick creamy fluid which immediately heals 

 the wounds, and Is pleasant to taste. Hence his name. 



Recurved Spine Pincushion (Coryphantha or 



Mammillaria recurvata) 

 Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora 



Hidden under a crevice In the rocks along our dusty track, 

 we spy that little fellow, Coryphantha recurvata^ with his 

 dense coat of interlocking thorns, stout but slender and often 

 hooked on the ends, recurving downward and inward toward 

 the plant body with yellow and orange-brown hooks, and 

 almost hiding the plants from our view. Rightly are the 

 Pincushion Cacti named : with their tiny compactness and 

 beautiful symmetry, they resemble nothing so much as an 

 old-fashioned pincushion, with twenty or more sharp stout 

 needles stuck into each brilliantly colored, soft downy 

 cushion. Although among the larger Pincushion Cacti, this 

 little fellow grows only six inches tall, more often four 

 inches, and Is three to six inches wide, a broad and rounded 

 dwarf, flattened and depressed on top; often as many as fifty 

 of his companions, their heads occasionally peering over one 

 another, grow in a clump two or three feet across and half 

 a foot high. The blossoms with their tan and brownish 

 sepals and the inner petals lemon-yellow, tone into the brown 

 and orange-brown spines, the sharp needles of our pretty 



