


IE ot ORY OF CACTUS 3 

Island and they grow from 250 feet below sea level to a height of 14000 feet 
in California alone, and in Peru grow over 4000 feet higher. The writer has 
seen cacti growing in Death Valley where a rain comes once every few years, 
and also in Panama where it rains at least every day for nine long months. 
TYPES OF CACTI 
As in all plants, the binomial system is used in naming. All cacti are under 
one family Cactaceae which is divided into three tribes Pereskieae, Opuntieae, 
and Cereeae which are again divided into about one hundred twenty-five genera. 
Each genus is divided into species except the monotypic genus or that genus 
which has only one species. The Toumeya papyracantha is a good example of 
this. Each of the fifteen hundred species are again divided as to varieties or 
forms. A variety of a species is where the plant has changed due to something 
in the soil or the altitude or climate as the Opuntia opuntia has. brown glocids 
in Ohio (17), Indiana, and Missouri but in Maryland and Virginia, they are 
reddish, and in Tennesee the pads are much larger than in Ohio. These observa- 
tions are from wild plants collected by the writer. 
A form may be regular (64), monstrose (22) or crested (16), one does not 
recognize a malformation which is caused from growing plants too long inside; a 
platyopuntia kept in a dark room will grow about the size of a lead pencil and 
a yard long. Also the plant will be white instead, of its rich green color. 
The nipples on the corypantha will grow out of shape and the plant lose all 
the pigment in its skin; this will give it an entirely different appearance. 
A monstrose form will "grow very irregularly, usually having bumps or 
knots all over it. They always grow true to form but a crystate will grow in 
a pattern usually spread like a fan and ruffled. These are both caused by the 
doubling and redoubling of the artery system of the plant and not from an 
injury to the plant as some state. The proof of this statement is that the 
seeds of a crystate will germinate about eighty percent crystates. If a plant 
is injured nature wéll immediately start searing the injury over with a hard woody 
shell, which seals the torn arteries. When an artery is injured, it stops right 
there as in the case of a plant with the top cut off, a new head will start from 
an areole. To explain this better, let us liken the cactus plants to a city water 
system. In the city the water is pumped and stored, and then used at some 
future time. That is just what the cactus does, when it rains the roots suck 
up the water and the arteries carry the water to cells which store the water 
in the plant. If a pipe is broken in the city, a new pipe can be run around 
the break and the water flows on. This is what the cactus does. The system 
of arteries in a cactus all start in the roots and end at each areole so when a 
new head breaks out, a complete set of pipes is ready to carry the water to 
all parts of the new head. But when these arteries start to double and re- 
double, the plant loses its regular shape and may take on any of a hundred 
shapes, no two crystates are identical. We have only used the words arteries 
and pipes to make this more easily understcod. 
As there are about fifteen hundred species of cacti, one might say there are 
fifteen hundred forms as no two are exactly alike. They range in size from 
the colossal Carnegia gigantea of Arizona that grows to a height of fifty 
_ feet, down to the Corypantha minima (80) that scarcely ever grows to be an 
inch high. These diminutive plants were discovered by us in company with 
Mr. A. H. Hughes, who is postmaster at Station A, El Paso, Texas, in the 
Spring of 1927, on a collecting trip in the Big Bend of Texas. We sat on 
a ledge to eat our lunch when imagine our surprise to see a row of little pink 
blooms in a crevise of rock one-quarter inch wide. When we investigated, we 
found small plants with the heaviest spines in proportion of any plant in 
existence. i 
Some cacti grow in the shape of a tree (76), some in the form of a ball (81), 
some like a vine (57), and others in every conceivable shape. One of the 
queerest is the Peniocereus greegii which grows about ninety-five percent under 
ground. The plant in Arizona has been known to grow a root system of 
one hundred twenty-five pounds when the stock and branches weight less than 
five pounds. Then there are the Epiphyllum (4) which grow as leaves, 
mostly many times longer than they are wide, and the Rhipsalis which grows 

21 Radley cutting A. pentagonus. 24 Echinopsis meuhleri in bloom. 
22 Whitehead and a fine monstrous. 25 Opuntia arborescens 
23 Blooming-size cacti, on the hand. 

