The next growth to attract our notice is that called by botanists Cereus Schottii or Lophocereus Schottii. It is named also for convenience Senita, Zina, and Sina. This is a remarkable cactus found in Sonora (a state of Northern Mexico), southwestern Arizona, and Lower California under the most arid conditions. It grows commonly in colonies and patches in the mountain cañons and there enjoys protection that the individual plants do not have. The young plants are equipped with silvery, short, stout spines, and the old ones with slender, long, flexible bristles, grayish or purplish gray, giving the appearance of old age—hence the common popular name of Senita. At a little distance these bristlelike thorns appear like fine purplish bands, from their symmetrically twisted spiral arrangement on the five- to twenty-foot yellow-green stems, which are supported by wooden cores or scalloped cylinders. Senita plants are very striking on the arid mountain slopes, along the foothills, and in protected valleys and cañons where the winter is warm and the summer hot, their dense branches often interlocking in huge clumps twenty feet across and twenty-five feet high. Their bristly stems resemble somewhat a squirrel’s tail or bottle brush, and in Mexico the plants are grown for fences which are unique and effective. The flowers are about an inch and a half long and as wide, shaped like a bell, with very lovely cream-white and pale pink petals shading into deep pink at the tips. The fruit is a greenish brown changing to dull red when mature, and globose. The blossoms and fruit of this species are rather small for the Cereus; the flowers open in the evening and close in the morning, and while delicate are not at all showy.
Prohibition Cactus (Cereus Emoryi)
Lower California, Northern Mexico, and Southwestern California
Bergorocactus Emoryi, as he is sometimes called, is a little fellow to have such a long name. He is odd and rather humble, and very much resembles the Hedgehog Cactus, another group of Cereus, entirely. He grows well on the arid hillsides near the southern coast in San Diego County, California, and in Lower California; perhaps we should call him the “Prohibition cactus,” for he likes his home place dry. A foot or two high, he grows in thick impenetrable masses ten to twenty feet across, and covered with a dense spiny coating; fifteen to thirty slender, yellowish, needlelike but stiff thorns, half an inch to an inch long or longer; pale yellowish brown flowers, quite small and clustering toward the tips of the stems. As we stop a moment here in Lower California to view him, we see that he is somewhat interesting, but though a member of the noble tribe of Cereus not attractive to us as a weird cactus, having little to suggest the dignity and grandeur of the giant Sahuaro, the uniqueness of the Pipe Organ with its finest of fruit, or the exquisite blossoms of la Reina de Noche, queen among desert flowers.
Old Man Cactus (Cereus senilis)
Mexico
Next in line of our fashion parade comes the Cereus senilis, sometimes called by the botanists Cephalocereus senilis (a polite way of saying “old man”). For a long time he has been one of the most popular of the Cactus Clan. He grows well in cactus gardens and conservatories, here and in Europe, and is greatly in demand on both continents; his habitat is the limestone foothills and mountains in northern and central Mexico, and is rather inaccessible. We find that the radial spines of the young plants are transformed into coarse white translucent hairs from four to twelve inches long, and, being deflexed like long gray hairs, suggest the name of “Old Man Cactus.” In the varying conditions and locations where he grows, he is sometimes called the “Bunny” or the “White Persian Cat” cactus. All the spines are fragile and break easily, and hence the Old Man cactus should not be handled more than is necessary. In maturity he grows around his head a dense mass of tawny wool, sometimes longer on one side suggesting a hat cocked to left or right, which gives the tall plant a most grotesque and rakish appearance. This cactus is columnar and little branched; in some instances he grows to a height of forty-five feet, and is a very imposing sight in the landscape. The stems and branches are pale green or yellow-green with a scurfy waxy coating over the surface, are not tough, and sometimes a large tree can be cut down with a small pocketknife! The rose-colored flowers are bell-shaped or funnel-shaped and night-blooming, appearing only on the older plants. The inch-long fruit is rose-colored and covered with scales and tufts of hair or short wool! How strangely at times Nature does her work!
Pipe Organ Cactus (Cereus Thurberi)
Lower California, Sonora, and Southern Arizona
An aristocrat of the Cactaceæ claims our attention next, Cereus Thurberi, called also the “Pipe Organ” cactus. It grows well in the arid mountain regions, on the lower mountains and flats of Lower California and from Sonora in Mexico to southern Arizona, usually in colonies, seeking the rocky, gravelly soil in foothills and along the mountain cañons. Notice how it branches near the base and grows from ten to twenty feet tall; very erect and stately, the plant makes quite an appearance in green armor with a thin waxy coat. Surrounded by smaller patches of cacti where it towers well over them all, Thurberi presents a very striking picture in this setting of old Mexico or Lower California. We note that its great columns of yellow-green cuticle look much like the pipes of a giant organ silhouetted against the sky away out on the desert; hence the name Pipe Organ cactus or Pitahaya. We might even fancy that the rush of the wind through mountain and cañon, with its piercing shriek or duller roar, the song of the desert, is music emanating from the giant pipes of this great Organ cactus of Arizona and Lower California. The flowers, like those of many others of its kind, bloom in the night and are usually closed by nine o’clock in the morning; growing in the tops of clusters of slender spreading grayish spines, lining the fifteen or twenty ridges of the stems, and, it is to be noted, appearing only on the tips of the stems; beautiful blooms three inches long with white margins, the delicate petals light pink with green and white bands along their edges, the innermost petals satiny white with some pink above, gradually toning into the purple-red of the sepals. The fruit of “Pitahaya dulce” as the Indians call the plant, globose, olive-green, with a crimson sweet fleshy pulp when ripe, is a rare delicacy and is highly prized by Indians and Mexicans for the making of jellies and jams, conserves, syrups, and sweetmeats. From the syrup they also make wine.