NATIVE PRICKLY PEAR IN SOUTHERN TEXAS. 3 
and number of the spines being left entirely out of consideration. 
The two species are very similar in stature and general habit, forming 
a hemispherical shrub about 4 feet high when fully grown. Since 
their selection and planting, they have been described—one as 
Opuntia gommei and the other as Opuntia cyanella. 
Opuntia gommer is a bright, more or less glossy, yellowish green 
species with yellow flowers. 
Opuntia cyanella, on the other hand, is glaucous or waxy blue- 
green, with flowers opening deep red but soon changing to purplish. 
Both species have yellow spines and spicules in large numbers; in 
fact, all the native species of the delta region are among the most 
spiny of any of the economic species of this genus of plants, their 
spines and spicules being not only numerous, but large and stout. 
The spines are so large and stout and die and become inflammable so 
tardily that these delta species are among the most difficult in the 
genus to prepare properly as food for stock. 
_ The first two rows previously discussed were planted to a mixture 
of these two species in about equal quantities. 
Besides these two, a third species, which has not been botanically 
named, having a tall habit of growth and differing in several par- 
ticulars from the others, was planted in another row, largely for 
comparison and to verify the writer’s judgment of the species most 
profitable to grow. In other words, it was desirable to determine 
whether one with a little experience can go into a prickly-pear region 
which is little known and by ordinary observation unerringly select 
the species of most economic worth. 
At the same time that the plantings of these natin’ species were 
made a single row of approximately the same length as the others 
was set in the same way to an introduced species frequently culti- 
vated by the Mexicans about Brownsville. It is the same as one of 
the Mission varieties so commonly grown in southern California. It 
is the spiny ‘‘tuna blanca”’ of the region of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, 
and the ‘‘tuna teca,”’ or ‘‘tuna blanca teca,’’ of the eastern Jalisco 
and Aguascalientes regions. 
YIELDS. 
The third row of the field was planted to this third species (the 
unnamed one) and it was harvested a week before row 2. The row 
was 463 feet long and the yield, when harvested, precisely as the 
other, was 13,190 pounds, or at the rate of 77.03 tons to the acre for 
two seasons’ growth. This means an average annual growth of 
38.51 tons per acre, as contrasted with 50.36 tons in the case of a 
mixture of Opuntia gommei and Opuntia cyanella. 
The introduced Mission pear yielded at the rate of 42.75 tons per 
acre per annum, which was greatly in excess of our expectations. 
