The Cairo bulletin., 1909-12-08
THE sPINELEss CACTUS.

'NSH' WEN U.s. anu IiiA't Wv, H't+ios'
/ breeding or selecting. The Unite
States Bureau OF Plant Industry. wI
are told By David Griffiths. in u re
: cent bulletin Of the Department o
Agriculture, has been studying the
matter since 1907; and has collected
, and introduced about - spineleS,
species or varieties, 10 or ~ of which
are somewhat promising. 1t IS pre-
pairing to send out free for experiment
.rl,Q90 to 5000 cutinGs-but only e
growers who dwell in the area wher,
the plant will live. This ter
ritory is comparatively restricted. Il
must be borne in mind also, We are
reminded by The Plant World tue
son, AIla, April, that a splneles5 cac-
tp8 will not necessarily remain spine.
less UEfayorable conditions, such as
alkaline soil, heat OF drought may be
expected TO develop the tiay sriaes
that most of them possess. Further
Says the paper named above:
1t is essential TO remember tina:
these plants can not be put out t
shift fer themselves; they must BIZ
farmed like any other crop, tho. owing
10 their resistance they permit mere
latitude in their treatment than mes.
other plants. The pricklypear
plants, as they nov exist, are adapted
TO region having considerable rain
fall, but too irregUlarly dist tbuted FOL
ordinary crops - they are The camel3
OF The vegetable world They must
have water, but they can get alons foI
long periods without it, What IS most
needed In the spiueless pricMy pears
to-day is greater hardness, but this
quality can not be bred into them in
two or three years. 1t might be pos
sible, by careful breeding and aelec-
tIon, in a decade 0" more t9 increase
the hardness of the rapid-grOwiDg
prickly pears, so as to ,... push the
limit of their cultivation 10 the north
ward vecy materially But this will
take much patient toll and many years
q experimentation
There are two ways OF attacking
the problem One may depend upon
selection alone. TO gain hardness by
this method one would be obliged to
discard the present spineless species
entirely and work with the hardy spiny
natives for it can not be expected
that the spineless .orms can be so i'm
proved within themselves as to with
stand Is Fer cent more Of cold than
they do now The other way is to
hybridize the present spineiess forms
with some hardy plant possessing as
many desirable characters as possible.
The slight variation that oCurs In
vegetatlye propagation reriers this
method Of impro cement practically
useless. The method OF Improvement
by seed-selection requires several gen
erations OF plants; but when it is re-
membered that cacu can be grown
from seed only with difficulty and that
several years are required to grow
generation to the stage OF seed pro
ducJiou the magnitude of the task
OF improving cacti is easily seen. 1t
must be remembered that neither OF
the parents is really spIne!ess, even
the socalled 'spinrless one having
some sp'nes and a strong tendency to
revert TO more spiny condition. 1t
takes a long time to breed The spiles
OH entirely, or even practically, but to
produce a hardy apidgrowins plant
should not be SO difficult, provided
ones conception of hardness is noj
too eXactlng. The prediction is ven
t3red that if any Improvement is made
in the hardness Of rapid-growing var
icties it will be through the spiny
plants and not the spineles, ones.
Meanwhile the daily press is quite
busy with the spineless c2ctus. The
writer quotes an advertisement Offering
plants for a dollar each, and some for
eign botanists, not being aale to dis
tinsuish between American science
and American journalistic enterprise,
are commenting unfayorably on the
former In a still more eytravagant
statement a ''propagating company
Is said to have ACQUIRED possession of
specimens of a variety valued at
$1,000 EACH This is certainly, as
President Lincoln would have said,
interesting if true, and we need not
be surprised that the thousand dollar
spineless is called "wonderplant'
in the promoter S description The
Bureau OF Plant Industry is more
modest Says the writer OF article
from which we have been c Jting:
In the midst of these tri; : we note
that another Of cur fore i friends,
tho little dazed at the way We do
things, nevertheless concludes, after
turning it all over, that cacti are
worthy to be taken into consideration
By all bOtanists and botanical insti-
tutes, Let us sincerely hope that a
period of consideration is just before
Es.