162 



The Plant World. 



vision of the Pacific Eriogonums was projected, and after his 

 return to the east in August he spent some time studying the 

 material in the herbaria at Cambridge, New York and Phila- 

 delphia. The next summer he planned to devote to field studies 

 in California. But this was not to be. Seized with a sudden 

 illness, this excellent botanist and genial Christian gentleman 

 died at his home in Davenport, February 20, 1890. 



OBSERVATIONS ON CACTI IN CULTIVATION. 

 By J. C. Blumer. 



EFFECT OF MOISTURE AND FERTILIZER UPON SAHUARO. 



At Sahuarito, twenty-five miles south of Tucson, an in- 

 dividual Sahuaro (Cereus gigantens), evidently transplanted, 

 was seen growing in a small sand wash just outside the fence 

 of a corral. It evidently receives large quantities of water over- 

 flowing a cattle trough from time to time, and with it a large 

 amount of highly nitrogenous food in the form of cattle manure 

 in solution. The plant is about twelve feet high and sixteen 

 inches in diameter, with thirty-four ribs near the top. It is 

 evidently increasing rapidly in size, and is so insecurely rooted 

 in the sand that it may be easily swayed. The number of spines 

 arising from one areole was found to be the same in this as in an 

 individual of the same species growing on the east slope of Senti- 

 nel Hill, near the Desert Laboratory (about twenty-five), but 

 those of the Sahuarito plant were but one-half to one-third as 

 long, and very much more slender and bristle-like. The epi- 

 dermis and palisade tissue, however, were thicker, and the section 

 cut was richer in starch and chlorophyll. The parenchymatous 

 tissue was somewhat green for several centimeters inward from 

 the sinuses, and at these points the vascular tissue was hardest to 

 sever. The point which first drew attention, however, was the 

 very remarkable profusion of buds, flowers and green fuits in 

 all stages of development, that covered the plant on all sides 

 for three feet from its top. A careful estimate placed the number 

 of these upon the plant on June 9, 1909, at three hundred to 



