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The climbing Cactuses are usually planted in a little mound composed of loam and brick rubble, and their stems either trained along rafters or allowed to run up the back wall of a greenhouse, against which they root freely, and are generally capable of taking care of themselves with very little attention from the gardener. In Frames.
I found an American family here, with whom I dined, Doyle and his wife, nice young people, Doyle agent for the great line of coaches to run to the frontier of the old States. All has gone to decay. The buildings are unused and ruinous, and the large gardens show now only wild cactuses, willows, and a few olive-trees.
These are characterised by a thin, drooping or trailing stem, and, though not strictly climbers, they may most fittingly be considered in a group by themselves. Some botanists have made a separate genus for them, viz., Cleistocactus, but for all practical purposes they may be grouped under the above heading, whilst popularly they are known as the Rat's-tail or Whipcord Cactuses.
Flower-gardens at least were there in plenty; for every limb was covered with pendent cactuses, gorgeous orchises, and wild pines; and while one-half the tree was clothed in rich foliage, the other half, utterly leafless, bore on every twig brilliant yellow flowers, around which humming-birds whirred all day long.
Among the cactuses, that rise in columns twenty feet high, appear the Indian huts of the Guaykeries. Every part of the landscape was familiar to us; the forest of cactus, the scattered huts and that enormous ceiba, beneath which we loved to bathe at the approach of night.
The road itself was excellent but the sun beat down with fearful force, and the heat was reflected from the bare road and the rock cliffs along which we travelled. At one place the vegetation consisted of a curious mixture of gigantic cactuses, rising as single stalks as high as telegraph poles but larger in diameter, and palms.
As they form the perfect central type of desert vegetation, and are also familiar plants to everyone, they may be taken as a good illustrative example of the effect that desert conditions inevitably produce upon vegetable evolution. Quaint, shapeless, succulent, jointed, the cactuses look at first sight as if they were all leaves, and had no stem or trunk worth mentioning.
In dry gulches and on taluses and sun-beaten crags are sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave, etc. Where springs gush from the rocks there are willow thickets, grassy flats, and bright flowery gardens, and in the hottest recesses the delicate abronia, mesquit, woody compositae, and arborescent cactuses.
I remember," she broke off, "an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a separate pot. Once in a hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt said. But she died before that happened " We told her to keep to the point.
Marble sculptures, much weather-stained, and generally broken-nosed, stood along these stately walks; there were many fountains gushing up into the sunshine; we likewise found a rich flower-garden, containing rare specimens of exotic flowers, and gigantic cactuses, and also an aviary, with vultures, doves, and singing birds.
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