10 THE FANTASTIC CLAN 



Saguaro, or Giant cactus. Sahuaro Is the "Sage of the 

 Desert" because of the great age he attains, often two hun- 

 dred fifty years or more. He Is the giant tree of the cactus 

 clan. There are Sahuaro out on the Great American Desert 

 that were old when the thirteen colonies became a nation in 

 1776. Proud and dignified and stately they stand out there 

 In the great alone, silent sentinels of a long gone past still 

 hardy In the towering strength of their great age, with 

 yesterday gone forever and looking to the day that Is yet 

 to come. 



Near sunset we may fancy them in silent meditation as If 

 determining some mooted question of time or weather. For 

 in case of long continued drought the reservoir systems of 

 these great trees store up enough moisture to last them for 

 three years, and they will blossom and fruit just the same 

 without fail and on time ! Over the entire length of these 

 giants, run long ridges or flutlngs, which serve the plants as 

 miraculous reservoirs for water: as the ridges expand, the 

 plant becomes water-filled; and as the great tree uses up Its 

 moisture, these flutlngs contract into proper position, thereby 

 exhibiting but one of the many marvels in engineering con- 

 summated by Nature, the Great Engineer. Along his twenty 

 or twenty-five flutlngs she has given Sahuaro a formidable 

 array of long sharp spikes which defy the approach of man 

 and beast alike : grayish black spines, clustering on the lower 

 ridges of the plant and never bearing flowers, and clusters 

 of yellowish thorns, on the upper part of stem and branches, 

 that bear the blossoms and fruit. 



Thirty to fifty feet tall, these sentinels of the desert tower 

 above the baby Pincushion, the ChoUa, the Creosote and 

 Desert Sagebrush, and the other Cerel, which seem but tiny 

 dwarfs In comparison. Columns of their massive trunks 

 grow singly for a distance of ten to fifteen feet, then curve 

 abruptly erect in candelabralike branches, terminating in 



