THE BABY CACTUS 41 



curved both upward and downward. Little bells are the 

 flowers peeping out in a circle at the bases of the old tubercles 

 and laughing up at us gayly as we motor slowly along the hot 

 dusty road. 



Sunset Cactus (Mammillaria Grahamii) 



Southern Arizona, JVestern Texas, Southern California, 

 Southern Utah, and Mexico 



We have come more than two hundred miles on this second 

 springtime trek across the ocean of sand and sagebrush and 

 mesquite, with its brilliant flashes of color and fragrance, 

 and still the clumps of dainty pincushions attract us almost 

 against our will. As the sun completes his journey across the 

 western skies, one of the most beautiful of all Nature's crea- 

 tions claims our attention; this pincushion has earned a 

 title appropriate to its lovely self, the bright pink and rose 

 tints of its bell-like blossoms toning into the pink glow of 

 the desert sunset in a circle of full open brilliant flowers, 

 their many brightly glowing segments spreading out like so 

 many iridescent rays of the setting sun. What name could 

 be more apropos than "Sunset Cactus"? With her evanes- 

 cent beauty and delicate perfume she is one of the most pop- 

 ular as well as the most abundant of the Mammillaria, rang- 

 ing from Mexico through Southern California and Arizona 

 to southern Utah. From two to ten inches tall, only a little 

 more than two inches in breadth, she grows more slender than 

 her brothers; her twenty rows of compact tubercles are set 

 in a beautiful gray-green symmetrical spiral, and bear twenty 

 or so slender grayish white radiating spines with dark tips, 

 a half-inch long or less, and two central thorns sticking out 

 stouter than the others, their bodies pale pink and their sharp 

 tips curving upward in a transparent golden fringe of 

 color. 



