The soil and climate of the
southwest from Texas to California seem to be just to its liking.
It grows rank and often forms dense thickets. The root is a
tough wood from which, it is said, the best Mexican saddletrees
are made.
The plant consists of an aggregation of thick, flat, oval leaves,
which are joined together by narrow bands of woody fiber and
covered with bundles of fine, sharp needles. Its pulp is
nutritious and cattle like the young leaves, but will not eat
them after they become old and hard unless driven to do so by the
pangs of hunger. In Texas the plant is gathered in large
quantities and ground into a fine pulp by machinery which is then
mixed with cotton-seed meal and fed to cattle. The mixture makes
a valuable fattening ration and is used for finishing beef steers
for the market.
The cholla, or cane cactus, is also a species of Opuntia, but its
stem or leaf is long and round instead of short and flat. It is
thickly covered with long, fine, silvery-white needles that
glisten in the sun. Its stem is hollow and filled with a white
pith like the elder. After the prickly bark is stripped off the
punk can be picked out through the fenestra with a penknife,
which occupation affords pleasant pastime for a leisure hour.
When thus furbished up the unsightly club becomes an elegant
walking stick.
The cholla is not a pleasant companion as all persons know who
have had any experience with it. Its needles are not only very
sharp, but also finely barbed, and they penetrate and cling fast
like a burr the moment that they are touched. Cowboys profess to
believe that the plant has some kind of sense as they say that it
jumps and takes hold of its victim before it is touched. This
action, however, is only true in the seeming, as its long
transparent needles, being invisible, are touched before they are
seen. When they catch hold of a moving object, be it horse or
cowboy, an impulse is imparted to the plant that makes it seem to
jump. It is an uncanny movement and is something more than an
ocular illusion, as the victim is ready to testify.
These desert plants do not ordinarily furnish forage for live
stock, but in a season of drought when other feed is scarce and
cattle are starving they will risk having their mouths pricked by
thorns in order to get something to eat and will browse on
mescal, yucca and cactus and find some nourishment in the unusual
diet, enough, at least, to keep them from dying.
