PAINTED CANVAS OF THE DESERT 109 



fruit is pear-shaped and slender. This plant has small 

 joints, and with its long weak slender spines and large beauti- 

 ful flowers is a very attractive species. At the same time 

 it is quite a rare specimen of the Cactacea Family. 



Hoiv to grow 



Plants grow indoors and out, and are not injured by tem- 

 peratures of twenty-five or thirty degrees below freezing. 

 With colder weather they require protection. They are 

 diflicult to transplant on account of the fleshy spindle-shaped 

 roots, which decay if injured. Plants grow readily from the 

 cuttings of two joints or stems with the lower cutting covered 

 with soil, and prefer a sandy soil. They may be grown also 

 from seeds, but these germinate slowly. The delicata 

 thrives wnth moderate irrigation and should be watered once 

 a month during its growing season and given good drainage. 



Purple Prickly Pear (Opuntia santa rita) 



(Named from the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson, 

 Arizona, in the vicinity of which it was discovered) 



How to identify and how it grows 



Santa rita, or the Purple Prickly Pear, is a plant from two 

 to five feet tall composed of jointed compact stems, a foot 

 or less in length and half as wide, forming into a head. These 

 joints are a bluish gray suffused with purple tones and are cir- 

 cular. This characteristic shape distinguishes the species from 

 the ordinary Prickly Pear, which has oblong or elongated 

 joints. The spicules form in a translucent yellowish fringe; 

 there are one or two twisted yellow spines, growing on many 

 specimens to three inches in length. The flowers are about 

 three inches long, and are very showy with their satiny 

 lemon-yellow colorings appearing in April and May. The 

 light green and purple fruit is elliptical. This plant is the 



