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Updated: May 7, 2025
Cacti need a minimum of two and a half hours of sunlight per day. However they should not be kept all day in the sun because they may wrinkle in too much of bright sunlight. Unlike other plants cacti produce carbon dioxide during the day and oxygen during the night. Hence, they are ideal plants to be kept in bedrooms to freshen up the air at night.
Of the cactus family, the most conspicuous is the saguaro, or giant cactus, which frequently attains the height of fifty feet. All the cacti are leafless and abundantly supplied with sharp, needle-like spines which protect them from herbivorous animals. The bark or outer covering has a firm, close texture that prevents the sap from evaporating during the long, dry season.
Except these kings of the forest, the trees indigenous to the land are somewhat dwarfed, but cacti of all kinds flourish, clinging to and hanging from the branches of the mahogany and of the "m'pani" trees, looking now and then for all the world like long green snakes. The "m'hoba-hoba" bush, with its enormous leaves, much loved by the elephant, forms patches of vivid green summer and winter.
"See those miserable little white plastered huts with roofs made of straw," said one of our party. "I did not know that the people were so poor." This picture of poverty was our first impression of Spain. For some distance the train had been running through a region apparently unfertile, where fences of sharp spined cacti enclosed small fields.
To the eye everything was unchanged: the desolation of bushes and cacti waving silently in the wind, stretched unbroken to the distant cliffs, the still dark sky was empty overhead, and the hot sun hung and burned. And through it all, a warning, a threat, throbbed this enigma of sound. Boom.... Boom.... Boom.... We questioned one another in faint and faded voices. "A clock?" "Like a clock!"
They commiserated the dog over her misfortune, and then turned their attention to preparations for the journey. "Have you ever been to La Paz?" asked Frank. "I have never been beyond Date Creek in that direction," I replied. "Is the Xuacaxélla really a desert?" "Only in the rainless season. Grasses, cacti, and shrubbery not needing much moisture grow there.
Near the house were scattered several uncouth varieties of cacti which seemed to have lost all semblance of vegetable growth, and had taken rude likeness to beasts and human figures. One high-shouldered specimen, partly hidden in the shadow, had the appearance of a man with a cloak or serape thrown over his left shoulder.
The two ends of the Cibao Valley seem like different countries, the eastern end covered with palm-trees, ferns and other flora of the torrid zone, and the western portion dry and dotted with giant cacti of fantastic shape.
In the morning we arrived at St. Fe. I was surprised to observe how great a change of climate a difference of only three degrees of latitude between this place and Buenos Ayres had caused. This was evident from the dress and complexion of the men from the increased size of the ombu-trees the number of new cacti and other plants and especially from the birds.
Drearier amid that weird twilight than in the concealing darkness stretched the desolate waste of encircling sand, its hideous loneliness rendered more apparent, its scars of alkali disfiguring the distance, its gaunt cacti looking deformed and merciless.
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