64 THE FANTASTIC CLAN 



delicious fruit served cold and also as a sauce and made into 

 jam. 



Strawberry Cacti are among the most popular plants for 

 southwestern cactus gardens and rock gardens because of 

 their fine showy flowers, and their profuse blooming and 

 fruiting. A single plant in the University of Arizona Cac- 

 tus Garden during the present year had fifty full-blown flow- 

 ers at one time and continued in blossom for fully two weeks. 

 In culture the plants may be watered regularly once a month 

 In the absence of rain during the growing season ; they require 

 little other care. They may be transplanted at any season 

 provided the roots are not seriously Injured, and when trans- 

 planted early In spring they blossom during that same sea- 

 son. Like other desert cacti, the Hedgehog or Strawberry 

 Cactus grows best in sunny locations. The plants grow with 

 single stems or in clumps, and from three Inches to a foot 

 and a half tall; others are solitary, and some in large flat 

 masses or hemispherical mounds. The flowers are crimson 

 and scarlet and pink and deep purple, and grow in heavy 

 masses; some are funnel-shaped and bell-shaped. 



As we start on our journey early In May, we travel down 

 a long, broad, well paved highway, straight toward the rising 

 sun. It is still quite cool, but the day will be blazing-hot be- 

 fore long. In the distance a blue haze hovers over Supersti- 

 tion Range for whose almost roadless canons and draws we 

 are bound. As we proceed along the highway, the cacti get 

 thicker and thicker, and as far as the eye can see are many 

 kinds of Cholla, Pincushion, and Barrel cacti. Here and 

 there is a stranger to us. We are at last In a veritable mu- 

 seum of desert cacti and their flowers. It might be called 

 the "Parade of the Cactus Flowers," for they are all around 

 and about us. We are hunting for the little Hedgehog, and 

 indeed we find him in plenty. There are about sixty different 

 varieties of this particular group of the Cactus Family — all 

 very beautiful and interesting, and some of them hide away 



