The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1884-12-11
Arizona cacti.

The coat-of-arms of Arizona should
be group of cacti with few lizards
rampant in the foreground, and the
background ornamented with Gilla
monsters, tarantulas and centipedes.
Such seal would be unique, and also
keep before the public eye some of the
most characteristic features of land of
which the early conner coined the apt
saying that s'eyery bush has a thorn,
every beast sting, for the stranger -
After a long residence in this land, how
ever, one finds the old pioneers ready to
do battle on all points in favor of these
sun-scorched deserts. One of the old
timers tries to find in the word Arizona
the meaning of s.the beautiful (sic)
zone, and with still more sentiment and
less fact, another says it means s'the
land of the beautiful maiden, y in honor,
l presume, of some ancient squaw. The
more matter-of-fact part of the commu-
nifty are willing to think that it means
1.-THE dry zone,n from ari and iona.
Whatever the name means, the fact re-
mains that j is dry zone of most un-
pleasant size, as one soon appreciates
To the stranger the vast number and
variety of cacti in Southern Arizona are
a continual source of interest. The
most conspicuous of these is the enor-
nous columnar shaft of the giant can
delabra cactus, the sahuaro of the Mex
leans. This is only found on the South
ern plains, where it frequently reache
height of fifty feet. Such examples
are two feet or more in diameter at the
base. The main columns are usually
supplemented at ten or fifteen feet from
the ground by from two to four branches,
which grow out of the trunk and extend
straight up, parallel with it. The coll
umns are fiuted from the ground to
the top by alternating deep grooves and
sharp ridges, the latter fringed by a
dense growth of spines. Although
these strange plants grow on the dryest
and most barren plains, yet their pIthy
trunks are always so full of water that
the stroke of an ak will bring oozing out
a small set of drops along the wound
made, and the traveller is sometimes
saved from death by resort to its water
soaked pith. The last of May the tops
of the columns are fringed by a crown
of beautiful tubular white flowers, from
two to three inches long The base of
this tube contains from a few to fifteen
or twenty drops of delicious honey-Gke
nectar. BY cutting the base of the
flower just above the base of the pistil
one can draw into his mouth from the
tube thus opened all the honey. Such
mode of taking food would be worthy
of place in fairy lore, and is without
parallel in the writer's experience.
In September these white flowers have
been replaced by q large, soft fruit
which the Mexicans and Indians make
into rude kind of jelly and pack it
away for winter use in clay pots made
by themselves. The difficulty of Sc
curing fruit growing on the top of a
spiny column from twenty to forty feet
from the ground is obvious; but with a
very long, slender pole, armed with a
pointed nail on the end the fruit is
speared and brought safely to hand.
The next largest species of cactus is
the prickly pear, which has the lobular,
palm-shaped leaves, growing one from
the other, that the familiar small species
growing in the East shows, except that
the prickly pear grows upright and
sometimes reaches an altitude of twenty
feet, with leaves nearly two feet across
and several inches thick. This species
also has an edible fruit Then comes
an endless variety of smaller species,
all bearing beautiful waxy flowers of
red, white or yellow hues in spring, and
conspicuous array of spines at all
times.-Cor. Philadelphia Times.
About 10000 Jewish immigrants