SHORT SPINED STRAWBERRY CACTUS (Echinocereus Bonkeræ)
A new and handsome little strawberry cactus, named in honor of Frances Bonker for her writings depicting the beauty and charm of the desert land.
SPINES AND FLOWERS
The spines of cacti are ever an interesting subject for study, and the very name “cactus” is suggestive of thorns. It is generally known that cactus spines develop from their bases and that they are impregnated with resin or a resinlike substance, while the spines of nearly all other plants (as for instance the plum) grow from their tips and are not resinous in character. A young growing cactus spine has a very soft yielding base while the tip is hard and sharp, and the sides retrorsely barbed. Because of their resinous nature the thorns persist on the desert long after the cactus body has disappeared, and often fragments of the thick cuticle remain with them, still firm, sharp and translucent. Such spines about a spot where a noble Sahuaro or Giant Cactus has fallen and gone back to Nature as dust may persist for a long period unchanged, without crumbling or otherwise disintegrating; this is true also of those of the bisnaga or barrel cactus. Thorns grow on the Giant Cacti for a hundred, even two hundred years, unalterable, sharp and hard and dangerous. Some species of cactus have as many as three kinds of spines: centrals, the inner thorns, usually the largest and stoutest; radials, the outer spines; and what are termed “bristles” but are more accurately described as “antennalike” spines. In some groups, as the bisnaga, the spines are cross-ridged or marked transversely, with the tips smooth, straight, or hooked. Many cactus spines are marked with brilliant colorings, and some are transversely banded with bright variegated “zones” of color. When held to the light they are translucent and show beautiful colorings: red, orange, yellow, brown, and purple. Generally cactus spines are glabrous, that is, smooth and without hairs, but the spines of some cacti are densely fine-hairy or distinctly hairy; and this can be seen easily with a pocket lens or the unaided eye: their pubescence commonly produces a grayish layer overlying the true color of the spines beneath. The thorns of Cholla differ from those of other cacti in that they are covered with sheaths which can be removed very easily, and then are not replaced. The significance of these sheaths is not clear, except that they help form a barrier against the intense heat of the sun and the burning desert sands.
We find, too, that the cacti with most pronounced thorny growth live in the hottest parts of the desert, where the thermometer often registers 130° Fahrenheit during the long summer days and sometimes up to 150°! Their dense layer of spines becomes a shield of lacework, protecting the plants by cutting off over twenty per cent of the light, and reducing the terrible heat by raising the humidity within the network of spines, which in turn reduces evaporation from the plant. If it were not for their thorns and sheaths cacti would be scalded by the burning temperatures of even one summer day in the great desert amphitheater of the sun. Being resinous, cactus thorns are very inflammable, and if ignited they all burn to a cinder before the fire ceases, for one cluster of spines will set others aflame and so the fire sweeps over the entire plant, rapidly changing the beautifully colored, symmetrical and translucent spines into ugly charred masses.
The cactus is encased in a thick cuticle which is continuous over the whole surface of the plant, except at the numerous, small, rounded or oval areas of growth called areolas. In the cactus all growth, of leaves, spines, spicules, flowers, and even roots (in the case of cuttings) and branches, takes place from these areolas, which are truly areas or centers of growth; and if all these areolas are cut away on the stem and its tip cut off, the plant ceases to grow and dies. Spines are generally understood to represent branches, since they grow from the tissues of the plant under the epidermis and not from the epidermis. The inordinate multiplication of spines in cacti is not well understood by botanists. Some cacti add thorns to their spine clusters in the areolas each year, and thus in time the cluster may come to have as many as fifty or even a hundred spines on old stems and large branches. Occasionally cactus spines replace themselves in areolas after the former thorns have been destroyed or burned off. The thorns of some cacti may grow as long as six inches and even longer, and as broad as one-fourth inch at their bases. After they complete their growth toward the close of the season and the bases become hard and firm, they do not elongate farther nor make further growth.
The flowers of cacti are generally large and showy and are quite responsive to light in their opening and closing. They have many stamens, from thirty or fifty to as many as three thousand in the Giant Cactus. This development of stamens is rare among flowering plants, and is due to a splitting process that takes place early in the development of the stamens of the embryo flower. The stamens of many cacti are sensitive to touch and when being worked by insects for pollen are constantly moving backward and forward. Cactus flowers differ also from nearly all other flowers in the number of sepals and petals, which is variable and relatively large, and in the fact that their sepals and petals are not distinct in character. Rather there is a gradual transition between the bracts of the ovary, if such are present, and the sepals; and likewise a gradual gradation in form, color, and size between the sepals and petals. There are usually several whorls or circles of petals in the flower; commonly such flowers are spoken of as being double.
CHAPTER III
THE BABY CACTUS
Out in the vast desert land in ages long gone by, the stifling sun had burned everything to a cinder. This seeming annihilation was but part of that great plan wherein the desert regions of the earth have been transformed into the greatest flower garden of all creation; where Time has chiseled out the filigree of lacework and pattern for the hills and valleys; where erosion has painted the beautiful pictures on the faces of mountains and hills; where volcanic action has juggled the rocks and mountain sides into fantastic shapes and designs, piling them up and leveling them out again for ages untold, until the Divine decree was accomplished. For God has walked amidst all this seeming turbulence, and with infinite patience has brought forth verdure and flowers the like of which do not exist anywhere else on earth; and to-day when Man ventures into the great arid wastes it would seem that he little anticipates the hidden loveliness to be found there—the wonder of desert creations, flowers and then more flowers, blossoms of rare and seductive beauty, of exotic and sensuous fragrance. Flowers that cannot be painted by brush or in coloring to do justice to the delicate waxlike originals. Flowers that seem like delicate souls wrapped in somber lifeless bodies, trying to gain expression through their beautiful colorings and evanescent perfume in the dry atmosphere of their monotonous existence, out in the great stillness of the arid spaces with only the midnight blue of the heavens to caress them, and the dew of the night zephyrs to kiss them when the torrid sun has gone.