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D. VAN NOSTRAND C OMPANY, INC . 120 Al exander St ., Pr incet on , New Jersey 2

D. VAN NOSTRAND C OMPANY, INC . 120 Al exander St ., Pr incet on , New Jersey 257 Fou r th Avenue, New York I O, New York 25 Hollinger Rd . , Tor onto 16, C anada Macmillan 8: Co ., L td . , St . Martin ’ s St ., Londo n , W .C . 2 , England All cor r esponde nce sh ould b e addr ess ed t o the pri ncipal oﬁ ‘ ice of the company at Pri ncet on , N. I . C OPYRIGHT, 1956 BY D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY , INC . Publish ed simultaneou sly in C anada by D . VAN NOSTRAND C OM PANY (Can ada) , L TD . Libr ary of C ongr ess C atalog C ard No . 56—8392 All Rights Reser ved This b ook , or any part s th er eof , may not b e r epr odu ced i n any for m wit h out writt en per missio n t he au th or s and the publishers . PRINTED I N T H E U NITED STATES O F A M ERICA F O R E WO R D T IS NOT ESSENTIAL t o live in a desert country to enj oy the cacti— the most bizarre of desert plants that God created . Far more people cultivate the cactus in temperate climes than is imagined . The plants hold a certain fascination ; for some it is the strange shapes the cacti assume; for others it is the delicate beauty of the exquisite ﬂowers ;and for still others it is the ease with which they can be grown in the home . Most of us are not born to love cacti, but once the bug bites us its sting usually lasts f or all time . I was born far from any desert region ;but when my father ﬁrst brought home a golden spined barrel cactus, a craving for more of its kind possessed me. It left an indelible mark in my heart . It was not until 1927 , however, that I realized what part cactus plants would play in my later life and what enj oyment they would bring me . It was then that I started working in the famous Missouri Botanical Garden where a ﬁne collection of cacti was maintained . I was given an opportunity t o work with the plants under my father ’s tutelage . Soon I was making cuttings, propagating by seed, and even grafting the plants . The desire t o learn more led me to read books on the subject, but there iii iv F O R E W O R D weren ’t too many books written in E nglish about them . Diligently I made my own observations, jotted down notes, acquired a camera to record the habits and ﬂowering of thecacti, and even deviated from the usual methods ofgrowing these bizarre plants just to see how they would respond . In order t o be with the plants day and night, I utilized every available window in our modesthome for growing them . I also began visiting other collections, made trips to the native haunts of the cacti, and made friends with all the com mercial dealers throughout the country . This book, modest in scope as it must be, then, is written with the hope that it will bring some information to the reader who will aspire to b e, or already is, a cactus fan . It is impossible to cram into these pages everything that has been learned about cactus plants, whether culturally or taxo nomically , for there are nearly two thousand species listed and various specialists have their own ideas about how to grow them and as to what names should be ascribed to them . This book , I hope, will tell in simple style the fundamental principles that are t o be followed in order t o grow success fully and enjoy, as I earlier said, the most bizarre plants that God created . ” LADISLAUS CUTAK Miss ou ri Bot anical Gar den C O N T E N T S Foreword iii WHAT IS A CACTUS? 1 VARIE TIE S OF CACTI 7 Hedgehogs and Barrel Cacti 9 Pincushion Cacti 14 Night-blooming Cereus 29 Jungle Cacti 46 CARE OF CACTI AND DISE ASE S Watering 68 Resting 7o Soils and Fertilizers 71 Insects 7 2 Common Diseases 82 USE S OF CACTI 85 Deser t ariums 85 Dish , Gardens 91 Novelty Containers 94 But t on Gardens 95 C acti Arrangements 96 Cacti Outdoors 97 C ONT E N T S PROPAGATION OF CACTI From Seed 1 00 From Cuttings 108 By Grafting 1 1 1 INTE RE ST IN CACTI 1 19 Bibliography 129 Index 135 L I S T OF IL L U S TRA TI O N S Drawings of Cacti 3 Prominent Characters in Pereskia , Opuntia , and Cereus Tribes 5 Miscellaneous Cacti 1 1 Pincushion Cacti 19 Night-blooming Cereus 35 Jungle Cacti 52 Mealybugs Infesting an E piphylum 74 Scale Insect Infesting an Opuntia Joint 77 Aphids Feeding on Pereskia 78 A Deser tarium 85 Novelty Arrangements for Cacti 93 Material and Procedure for Seed Propagation 101 Jungle Cacti Can Be Rooted in Water 1 03 Seedings , Sprouting in Fruit of Ferocactus 1 03 Propagati on— Cuttings 1 09 Green Fruits of Opuntia Are Capable of Producing Roots, Stems, and Flowers 1 12 The Flat Graft 1 15 The Cleft Graft 1 15 C H A 'P T E R I WH A T I S A C A C T U S ? ARE perhaps the oddest and most whimsical of all plants . The word Cac t us is of Greek origin and was applied to a spiny plant of the ancient Hellenic lands . Linnaeus, the father of systematic bot any, ﬁrst established the name to include the few species of the family then known to science . There are two kinds of cacti — those inhabiting desert regions and those living in the jungles . The curious and varied forms of the desert kind are th e result of a frugal diet which the arid, sun -scorched desert offers to such plants that tend to live in it. Without a doubt, these are the best examples of desert plant adapta tion . On the other hand, the jungle kind are less quaint in appearance, and these usually are epiphytic in habit . Furthermore, they are mostly spineless or , when they do possess spines , these organs are inconspicuous unlike the spiny armament of the desert cacti . The succulent “ spurges of the African deserts mimic the desert cacti, but even these African plants cannot boast such utterly fantastic shapes as prevail in the cactus family, which is considered in it s entirety as All American . For Brobdingnagian proportions and Lilliputian dimensions, for fantastic shapes and grotesque forms, the cacti have no equals . Out 2 C A C TU S G U I D E of these very forbidding, obstinate cactus bodies spring surprisingly beau tiful ﬂowers in shades of yellow, scarlet, rose, crimson, purple, violet, and blue . In the case of the night -blooming kinds, the blossoms are often waxy white, sometimes delicately suﬂu sed with pink or lightly tinged with green or bronze . E ven though the jungle cacti do not look anything like our popular conception of typical cactus, they do possess characteristics which readily identify them as members of the cactus family . To be a cactus, a plant must possess several distinguishing features not found in other plant families . A cactus can be deﬁned as a perennial plant with various de grees of succulency in its stem , mostly spiny, characterized by specialized organs known as ar eoles and, in addition, must possess certain modiﬁca tions in the ﬂower and fruit structures— all of which will be deﬁned brieﬂy and simply for a better understanding . In order for a plant to be a cactus it ﬁrst must be dicotyledonous, mean ing that it produces two seed leaves upon germination ;second, it must be perennial, meaning that it lives year after year ;third , it must possess areoles , which , as the name implies , are small areas marked out upon the surface of a joint and spaced in regular or irregular fashion;fourth, it has t o have an inferior ovary, meaning that the sepals and petals are inserted above the ovary;and ﬁfth, the fruit is a berry, with all the seeds enclosed in one compartment and not divided into sections as in the orange . The most distinguishing feature of the cactus is the areole which corre sponds to nodes on other plants from which leaves, branches, and ﬂowers emerge . Areoles are uploads/Ingenierie_Lourd/ cactus-guide.pdf