Page:Memoir of a tour to northern Mexico.djvu/90

[ 26 ], horizontal branches. The plant was here only 5 feet high, but grows about Santa Fe to the height of 8 or 10 feet, and continues to be found as far as Chihuahua and Parras. In the latter more favorable climate it grows to be a tree of 20 or 30, and perhaps even 40 feet high, as Dr. W. informs me, and offers a most beautiful aspect when covered with its large red flowers. It is evidently the plant which Torrey and James doubtfully, though incorrectly, refer to Cactus Bleo H. B. K. It is nearly allied to Opuntia furiosa, Willd., but well distinguished from it; and as it appears to be undescribed, I can give it no more appropriate name than O. arborescens, the tree cactus, or Foconoztle, as called by the Mexicans, according to Dr. Gregg. The stems of the dead plant present a most singular appearance; the soft parts having rotted away, a net work of woody fibres remains, forming a hollow tube, with very regular rhombic meshes, which correspond with the tubercles of the living plant.

The first Mammillaria was also met with on Waggon-mound, a species nearly related to M. vivipara of the Missouri, and also to the Texan M. radiosa, (Engelm. in Plant. Lindh. inedit.,) but probably distinct from either. Mr. Fendler has collected the same species near Santa Fe.

On Wolf creek the curious and beautiful Fallugia paradoxa, Endl., looking like a shrubby Geum, was found in flower and fruit; also a (new?) species of Streptanthus, and an interesting Geranium, which I named G. pentagynum, because of its having its five styles only slightly united at