A DESERT FASHION SHOW 5 



common popular name of Senita. At a little distance these 

 bristlelike thorns appear like fine purplish bands, from their 

 symmetrically twisted spiral arrangement on the five- to 

 twenty-foot yellow-green stems, which are supported by 

 wooden cores or scalloped cylinders. Senita plants are very 

 striking on the arid mountain slopes, along the foothills, and 

 in protected valleys and canons where the winter is warm 

 and the summer hot, their dense branches often interlock- 

 ing in huge clumps twenty feet across and twenty-five feet 

 high. Their bristly stems resemble somewhat a squirrel's 

 tail or bottle brush, and in Mexico the plants are grown 

 for fences which arc unique and effective. The flowers are 

 about an inch and a half long and as wide, shaped like a bell, 

 with very lovely cream-white and pale pink petals shading 

 into deep pink at the tips. The fruit is a greenish brown 

 changing to dull red when mature, and globose. The blos- 

 soms and fruit of this species are rather small for the 

 Cereus; the flowers open in the evening and close in the 

 morning, and while delicate are not at all showy. 



Prohibition Cactus (Cereus Emoryi) 



Lower California, Northern Mexico, 

 and Southwestern California 



Bergorocactus Emoryi, as he is sometimes called, is a little 

 fellow to have such a long name. He Is odd and rather 

 humble, and very much resembles the Hedgehog Cactus, an- 

 other group of Cereus, entirely. He grows well on the arid 

 hillsides near the southern coast in San Diego County, Cali- 

 fornia, and in Lower California; perhaps we should call him 

 the 'Trohibition cactus," for he likes his home place dry. A 

 foot or two high, he grows in thick impenetrable masses ten 

 to twenty feet across, and covered with a dense spiny coat- 

 ing; fifteen to thirty slender, yellowish, needlelike but stiff 



