Burbank's Spineless Cactus
The Burbank improved cactus, on the other hand, is free not only from the long spines but from the even more harmful microscopic spicules. It is therefore "as safe to handle and as safe to feed as beets, potatoes, carrots or pumpkins." The new thornless varieties will produce a hundred tons of good feed where the average wild ones will yield only ten tons of inferior fodder. It can be grown on millions of acres of deserts where no other edible vegetation can be raised, and as it is possible to produce a thousand tons of feed on a single acre, the imagination conjures up the time when beef will once more be as abundant, as good, and as cheap as it was in the days of unlimited pasturage.
The leaves or slabs are valuable as food for other farm animals, including poultry.
The fruit, also, is produced in enormous quantity and is likely to become as important in our markets as bananas and oranges. The cactus bearing the best fruit is not yet quite spineless, but the fine bristles on the fruits are easily removed with a small whiskbroom before picking. Burbank's 1912 Spineless Cactus bulletin lists more than a dozen varieties cultivated for the fruit, and fifteen varieties raised for forage.
The cactus fruit "can be produced at less than one-tenth the expense of producing apples, oranges, apricots, grapes, plums, or peaches." There is never a failure in the crop, and the fruit can be stored like apples. It will oust the injurious "fillers" and adulterants now used by manufacturers. Excellent jams, jellies, syrups, marmalades and preserves can be made of cactus fruit at a minimum cost. For candies and for pickling, also, it can be used to advantage, and "the juice from the fruits of the crimson varieties is used for coloring ices, jelly and confectionery. No more beautiful colors can be imagined."
Mr. Burbank takes a keen delight in his new plants, and like other artists, he likes to know that you really see and feel what he has done. When we visited him in the summer of 1909, in company with John Burroughs and the California poet, Charles Keeler, nothing seemed to please him more than the proof we gave that we were actually familiar with his creations, by our comments on the improvements he had made in his crimson and crimson-and-gold California poppies and the wonderful Shirleys since we last raised them, the previous summer, in our Maine grounds. I felt like Parsifal in the enchanted garden. We had a chance to stroke the spineless blackberry and cactus, and to taste various kinds of berries and fruits more luscious than any that mortals have eaten since the Garden of Eden was destroyed.
