A DESERT FASHION SHOW 7 



is a very imposing sight in the landscape. The stems and 

 branches are pale green or yellow-green with a scurfy waxy 

 coating over the surface, are not tough, and sometimes a 

 large tree can be cut down with a small pocketknife! The 

 rose-colored flowers are bell-shaped or funnel-shaped and 

 night-blooming, appearing only on the older plants. The 

 inch-long fruit is rose-colored and covered with scales and 

 tufts of hair or short wool ! How strangely at times Na- 

 ture does her work I 



Pipe Organ Cactus (Cereus Thurberi) 



Lower California, Sonora, and Southern Arizona 



An aristocrat of the Cactaceae claims our attention next, 

 Cereus Thurberi, called also the "Pipe Organ" cactus. It 

 grows well in the arid mountain regions, on the lower moun- 

 tains and flats of Lower California and from Sonora in 

 Mexico to southern Arizona, usually in colonies, seeking the 

 rocky, gravelly soil in foothills and along the mountain 

 cafions. Notice how it branches near the base and grows 

 from ten to twenty feet tall; very erect and stately, the plant 

 makes quite an appearance In green armor with a thin waxy 

 coat. Surrounded by smaller patches of cacti where it 

 towers well over them all, Thurberi presents a very striking 

 picture in this setting of old Mexico or Lower California. 

 We note that its great columns of yellow-green cuticle look 

 much like the pipes of a giant organ silhouetted against the 

 sky away out on the desert; hence the name Pipe Organ 

 cactus or Pitahaya. We might even fancy that the rush of 

 the wind through mountain and canon, with its piercing 

 shriek or duller roar, the song of the desert, is music emanat- 

 ing from the giant pipes of this great Organ cactus of Arizona 

 and Lower California. The flowers, like those of many 

 others of its kind, bloom in the night and are usually closed 



