CACTUS COCHINILLIFER. SPINELESS COCHINEAL FIG. 
Class XII. ICOSANDRIA.— Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, CACTE.E. THE INDIAN FIG TRIBE. 
This Cactus may almost be reckoned arborescent, for it grows to the height of nine feet. The lower and 
older parts of the stem and branches are cylindrical or but slightly compressed, of a greyish ash colour, and 
woolly; the younger branches are every where proliferously jointed, their joints varying in size from four to six 
inches, to a foot in length, oblong or obovate, more or less attenuated at the base, all of them much com- 
pressed, flattened, of a deep full green colour, when young having several scattered fleshy, curved, subulate 
leaves scarcely half an inch long, which soon fall off, leaving a white scar. There are no spines. The 
flowers, which are three inches or more long, appear in the joints at the extremities of the branches, and 
generally at or near their superior margins. The base is occupied by the large, fleshly, obovate, truncated, 
reticulated, dark green germen, whose areolee constitute an oblong swelling or tubercle, tipped at the apex by 
a white scar, whence small leaf-like processes have fallen, and above which is a small fascicle of fine hairs or 
bristles. This has one cell filled with ovules, attached to a curved seed-stalk. Calyx of many ovate or 
obovate, very acute, erect, greenish red scales, gradually passing into the broader and larger, obtuse, very 
closely imbricated, connivent bright rose coloured petals. Stamens much protruded, very numerous, rose 
coloured, their base sunk into the top of the germen, forming a cylindrical mass, united below. Filaments 
very slender. Anthers oblong, pale yellow. Style dilated near the base, but again suddenly contracted at 
the very base, tapering upwards to the length of the stamens, and terminated by a cup-shaped stigma, cut 
into from five to eight yellow green rays. After the falling away of the Calyx, Corolla, Stamen, and Pistil, 
a considerable hollow remains on the top of the germen, and this latter, scarcely increasing in size, or 
altering in form, becomes a berry of a fine red colour within and without, having, in the centre, a number of 
nearly reniform, compressed seeds, enveloped in pulp. 
There are few tribes of plants that require illustration, by the aid of the pencil, more than the Cactuses ; 
they cannot be preserved in the Herbarium, nor so easily described in words, as many other plants. An 
idea, too, has been very generally current, that they are liable to much variation ; but from what we have 
ourselves seen of them in a state of cultivation, we think ourselves warranted in considering them to be 
tolerably constant to their character. 
With regard, too, to that particular species of Cactus, which nourishes the Cochineal Insect, much 
doubt has existed ; and we believe it must be allowed, that our plant, which was named by Linnaeus, and 
has been almost universally called C. cochinillifer, is not that which produces the best Mexican Cochineal ; 
nor are we prepared to say, of what part of South America it is a native. Linnaeus speaks of it as indi- 
genous to Jamaica, and the warmer parts of the new world; but Stone, who gives a very tolerable figure of 
it, says, that the plants he saw, in Mr. Worley’s plantation, were brought from the main Continent of 
America, by a Spanish priest, and affirmed to be the species on which grew the Cochineal. 
We know our present subject to be the true C. cochinillifer of Linnaeus, by his references to various 
figures, especially to that of Dillenius, in the Hortus Elthamensis above quoted ; and that author con- 
siders it may be the same as the Nocheznopalli or Nopelnochctz/i, figured in Hernandez ; except that, in 
the latter plant, the flowers are spreading, whilst in ours the petals are connivent. He does not say where 
it is indigenous. In the Chelsea garden according to Ray, it was cultivated prior to 1688, and was received 
from Barbadoes. 
Ulloa, not upon his own authority, as it appears, but on that of well informed travellers, states, that 
the Cochineal Cactus has no spines, and a fruit imbued with a deep-red pulp. This is partly contradicted 
by Clavigero, who says, “In Misteca, where I was for five years, I always saw the insect upon prickly 
Nopals. M. de Raynal imagines, that the colour of the Cochineal is to be ascribed to the red fig on 
which it lives ; but that author has been misinformed, for neither does the Cochineal feed upon the fruit, 
but only upon the leaf, which is perfectly green ; nor does that species of Nopal bear red, but white figs.” 
It is true, Clavigero adds, “ it may be reared upon the species with a red fig ; but that is not the proper 
plant of the Cochineal.” 
De Candolle, in his beautiful work entitled “Plantes Grasses,” has given, as the Cactus Cochinel- 
lifer, the C. Tuna of Linnaeus, a plant totally distinct from the Linn^ean cochinillifer, and whose flower is 
of a different structure. 
Thierry de Menonville, who so courageously procured* 1 the Cochineal Insect and the Cactus from 
1 This circumstance is thus related by Dr. Bancroft, in his valuable “ Researches on the Philosophy of Permanent Colours.” In the 
month of January, 1777, M. Thierry de Menonville left Port au Prince, in St. Domingo, for the purpose of procuring some of the living 
Cochineal Insects in Mexico, and bringing them away to be afterwards propagated in the Trench West India Islands; an enterprise, for 
the expence of which, four thousand livres had been allotted by the French Government. He proceeded by the Havannah, to la Vera Cruz 
and was there informed, that the finest Cochineal Insects were produced at Guaxaca, distant about seventy leagues. Pretending ill health 
