Page:Memoir of a tour to northern Mexico.djvu/89

Rh Mexico, Pinus osteosperma, (specimens of which were sent to me by Dr. Gregg, as collected on the battlefield of Buena Vista,) and to the nut pine of California, P. monophylla, Torr. and Frem.–these three species being the western representatives of Pinus Pinea and Cembra of the eastern continent.

The second species, Pinus brachyptera, is the most common pine of New Mexico, and the most useful for timber. A third species, Pinus flexilis, James, was overlooked by Dr. Wislizenus, but has been collected in fine specimens, by Mr. Fendler, about Santa Fe. Its leaves in fives and pendulous cylindrical squarrose cones assimilate it to Pinus strobus; but the seed is large and edible, as Dr. James has already remarked, and the leaves are not serrulate and much stouter. The Piñones, so much eaten in Santa Fe, appear principally to be the product of Pinus edulis. I shall have occasion to speak of three other pines when I come to the flora of the mountains of Chihuahua.

Linum perenne makes its first appearance here, and continues to Santa Fe, as well as the justly so-called Lathyrus ornatus. Several species of Potentilla, Œnothera, Artemisia, and Pentstemon, were collected in this district.

Among the most remarkable plants met with were the Cactaceæ. After having observed on the Arkansas, and northeast of it, nothing but an opuntia, which probably is not different from O. vulgaris, Dr. W. came at once, as soon as the mountain region and the pine woods commenced, on several beautiful and interesting members of this curious family, an evidence that he approached the favorite home of the cactus tribe, Mexico.

On Waggon-mound the first (flowerless) specimens of a strange opuntia were found, with an erect, ligneous stem, and cylindrical, horridly