ey 
oe 
pig eke RIO YN NI Aah tee 
Cereus marginatus 
Echinopsis multiplex 
Representative desert plants of easiest cultivation in the window garden. 
Cactuses as House Plants for the Busy Man—By Parker T. Barnes, 
Opuntia purpurascens 
Mesembryanthemum ficoides 
Sempervivum tectorum 
Euphorbia splendens 
Opuntia Braziliensis, grafted 
Anhalonium fissuratum 
Gasteria linguiformis 
All will survive as low a temperature as 35 degrees, if Kept dry 
New 
York 
THE PECULIAR MERITS AND FASCINATION OF THESE QUAINT AND WEIRD DESERT PLANTS 
AND THEIR REMARKABLE POWERS OF ADAPTATION TO VERY TRYING CONDITIONS 
Fok the man or woman who has only a 
few odd minutes to spare at irregular 
intervals for plant cultivation the cacti and 
some of the succulents will give the greatest 
amount of satisfaction. Unlike most other 
window plants they do not greatly resent 
irregularities in watering. They have no 
tender foliage to get damaged, or to 
fall if conditions become unduly _ bad, 
and they require less attention in the 
matter of repotting into larger-sized re- 
ceptacles than any ctler class of plants. 
Their slow rate or growth is a_ posi- 
tive advantage for the window  gar- 
dener, as a remarkably large assortment 
can be kept in the same quarters for a 
number of years without becoming unduly 
crowded. 
With very few exceptions indeed cactuses 
are not grown for their flowers, but when 
these do appear they are every bit as gorgeous 
as many of the better known flowering plants, 
and often indeed, with their intensely glow- 
ing ruby and purple shades, they rival even 
the most showy of the orchids. The flowers 
are also very large in comparison with the 
plants, and it is no unusual, thing to see“a 
little plant three or four inches high in a pot 
a trifle smaller, carrying two or three flowers, 
each one of which is of almost the same size 
as the parent stock. 
Cactuses offer untold opportunities for 
278 
“house gardens.”’ Unfortunates who are con- 
fined to city apartments, and whose only op- 
portunity to keep growing plants is confined 
to the living rooms or shelves in the window, 
can easily accommodate two or three dozen 
cactuses where there would hardly be space 
for one good-sized Boston fern or a couple 
of starved geraniums. ‘The little plants are 
never in the way, and can be shifted about 
easily as necessity demands; and though, of 
course, hard usage is most undesirable, they 
will survive the hundred and one accidents 
and strains upon their vitality that would be 
fatal to any other living thing. ‘Though the 
cat may jump and knock them down with 
such persistent regularity that the plants are 
