PAINTED CANVAS OF THE DESERT 103 



humble part in all this gorgeous portraiture of plant and 

 flower, mountain and valley and rocky cliff; and with the 

 touch of the Master Artist he takes his modest place in the 

 great aurora borealis of the desert. Bright yellow and 

 nearly four inches long are his large beautiful blooms, toning 

 into the green of the stigma lobes in a happy combination of 

 Nature's making, and forming, over the two- or three-foot 

 stems with their pale blue-green joints or dull green pearlike 

 appendages, a becoming aureole of gold, quite dazzling in the 

 brilliant sunlight. Sometimes he grows in dense thickets 

 several yards across and fringed with thick clusters of inch- 

 long brown and yellowish white spines and spicules, sharp 

 and needlelike, harshly repulsing the daring tourist who pre- 

 sumes to pluck his beautiful blossoms too rashly. 



Flapjack Prickly Pear (Opuntia chlorotica) 



Southern California, Arizona, Lower California, Northern 

 Mexico, New Mexico, and Nevada 



We are nearing the end of our long quest for the brilliant 

 Prickly Pears, having crossed the Arizona and California 

 deserts on our way, dipped down into southern Texas and 

 Northern Mexico, and now are intent on finding a distinctive 

 growth here in southwestern California called Opuntia 

 chlorotica. Light purple is the fruit of this typical cactus, 

 the stems yellow or light green; straw-colored and brownish 

 are the slender bristlelike spines, translucent yellow the spic- 

 ules. Almost a gay rainbow of itself, chlorotica graces the 

 mountain canons and foothills of six great sections of the vast 

 southwestern desert. A short trunk, half a foot or a foot 

 tall, branches into many jointed "flapjacks" six to ten inches 

 long and about as wide, which combine to form a compact 

 rounded head three to six feet high. The scaly fissured faces 

 of the pearlike basal joints so typical of the prickly pear are 



