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For the genera Cereus, Echinopsis, Echinocactus, Mamillaria, Opuntia, and Melocactus, a moist tropical house is provided, and in April the plants are freely watered at the root, and syringed overhead both morning and afternoon on all bright days. This treatment is continued till the end of July, when syringing is suspended, and the water supplied to the roots gradually reduced.
On one side may be seen green meadows, fruit trees, flowing water, cornfields, beechwoods, &c.; on the other, olive groves, thickets of arbutus, hedge plants the height of a tree, myrtles, and bay; on the naked rock aloes grow and the opuntia; in gardens, dwarf and date-palms, unprotected cycas revoluta, and orange and lemon trees; and wide valleys are filled with lofty carob trees so close are the boundaries between the flora of middle Europe and of the Mediterranean.
Perhaps that is why they kept on to the end of the two hundred-mile voyage. At any rate, they did, and they found the Scotch heather here. Here, too, one finds another strange plant, plentiful over on the sandy peninsula of Coatue, the Opuntia or prickly pear, a variety of cactus common enough in Mexico and portions of our Southwest, but surprising on this island.
This province produces great abundance of the opuntia, a species of the cactus, which nourishes the cochineal insect; but the natives are in use to string these insects on a thread by means of a needle, by which they acquire a blackish tint. The fruit of this plant is woolly, about the size of a peach, its internal substance being glutinous and full of small seeds.
They found just enough of level ground to enable them to stretch themselves, but they were contented with that. There was nothing for the animals to eat except the succulent, but thorny, leaves of the Cactus opuntia, or the more fibrous blades of the wild agave. This evening there were no quinoa seeds to be had, for none of these trees grew near.
It thrives in a warm greenhouse temperature. The best examples of this pretty Opuntia are grafted on a robust-growing kind, the stock being about 1 ft. long, and the scion forming a compact head of pretty, healthy-looking joints. Treated in this way, this species is most interesting and attractive. It may also be grown on its own roots.
For the several species of Opuntia and Echinopsis, which are sufficiently hardy to be cultivated on a sunny rockery out of doors, it will be found a wise precaution to place either a pane of glass or a handlight over the plants in wet autumns and during winter, not so much to serve as protection from cold as to shield them from an excess of moisture at a time when it would prove injurious.
Chatting in this way, we were now penetrating among Indian fig-trees Cactus opuntia commonly called prickly-pear trees. These plants, covered with yellow flowers, would, a month later, have been hailed with shouts of joy, for each of their upper stems would then bear one of those juicy fruits of which the Creoles are so fond.
OPUNTIA. Stem jointed, joints broad and fleshy, or rounded; spines barbed; flowers large; fruit spinous, large, pear-like. PERESKIA. Stem woody, spiny, branching freely; leaves fleshy, large, persistent; flowers medium in size, in panicles on the ends of the branches.
Still, though the form is different, the purpose of the two cotyledons and the juicy stem in the seedling Opuntia is the same as in the Cereus; and, as the growing point develops, the cotyledons shrivel up and fall off, the plant food they contained having passed into that part of the young seedling which was to be permanent.
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