96 



THE FANTASTIC CLAN 



Arizona mountains with its waxy green joints and pink 

 spines, sometimes brownish white thorns, and bright golden 



satiny blooms shading 

 into red and orange 

 at their bases and yel- 

 low-green toward the 

 margins, suffused 

 with purple-brown, a 

 lovely harmony of 

 color splashing across 

 the painted canvas of 

 brilliant desert flow- 

 ers. Appearing in 

 loose golden clumps, 

 one and one-half to 

 three feet tall, with 

 the spicules forming 

 a dense pinkish gray 

 fringe about the up- 

 per half of the areo- 

 las, this prickly pear 

 roams the rocky, 

 gravelly foothills and 

 mountains here in 



FOOTHILL PRICKLY PEAR (Opuntia southern Arizona and 

 Toumeyi) m Sonora. 



Cow's Tongue (Opuntia Unguiformis) 



Southern Texas 



We leave the foothills and bajadas of southern Arizona 

 and cross the Rio Grande into the prairie lands of southern 

 Texas in search of a peculiar Prickly Pear growing in the 

 vicinity of San Antonio, Texas; this Opuntia is widely cul- 



