Story is actually about my only North American deserty area.
So let's get right
Into
In Cactus land!
The Great American Desert, in the southwest part of our country, is the world's most famous place for cactus plants.
More than 200 kinds of them grow there. All these are entirely different from garden flowers, bushes and trees.
Many of them are so queer looking that you can hardly believe they are plants at all. But this strangeness is what makes it possible for each of them to live for many, many years. Here is the reason.
You see, no rain may fall in the Great American Desert for months at a time. The sun beats down so fiercely in the summer that the dry, sandy ground gets much too hot for you to step on it barefooted. There are only two methods by which a plant can live in such a place. One way is to send its roots so deep into the ground that they can reach coolness and moisture. The other is for the plant to store enough water inside itself during the short rainy season to carry it through the long dry times. This second method is the one that cactus plants follow.
Most cacti are so thick and fat that they look like small barrels or sometimes empty tubs upside down. This is because they are built to store up water as if they were regular reservoirs. Much of this stored liquid is contained in the rounded ridges which many of them have. Sometimes a person lost in the desert can save his life by slashing open a Barrel Cactus and drinking the liquid inside it.
Some kinds of cacti, such as the Prickly Pears, have flat, thick stems that look a little like leaves. Even these are used for water storage.
All cacti have many thousands of very sharp spines on the outside which will give you painful stabs it you press against them. These needles are fine protection against any desert animals which try to bite into the plant to get food or water. Even the smallest spines, so small that they look almost like hairs, could make an animal's tongue sore.
You would not expect these strange, believe-it-or-not plants to have beautiful blossoms. Nearly all of them do, though, and the flowers are sometimes very bright. Red, yellow, and white are their usual colors. Some of them are four or five inches wide and very fragrant.
The largest of the cacti is called Saguaro, or Giant Cactus. It sometimes lives for 200 years. When fully grown it may be fifty feet high and weigh as much as six tons.
Its waxy white flowers are followed by red fruits as big as hen's eggs. The desert Indians and the Mexicans make wine and jam out of these fruits. When a Giant Cactus dies these people use parts of its trunk and branches to make frames for their huts.
Most kinds of cacti bear fruits which are good food for birds, some mammals and often for people. So they are really useful plants in spite of their strange habits and appearance.
Here and there among the cacti you will find a queer bush or small tree called Mesquite. During most of the year it is not much to look at. But in the spring, when there has been some rain, it suddenly sends out thousands of pretty little leaves and yellowish flower sprays, entirely diferent from every other plant in the desert. When sunset comes the desert begins to cool off. By dawn the temperature may have fallen almost 100 degrees.
During the dark, cool hours the whole place swarms with wild creatures that stay in their underground burrows or other hideouts all day. There are tiny owls no longer than sparrows and bigger mammals like desert foxes, bobcats and deer. Great numbers of wild rats and mice scurry around looking for cactus seeds to eat. Fat lizards and snakes crawl this way and that hunting for whatever food they can find. And there are countless night-flying moths which you would never find during the day.
Very early morning is really the best time to see the desert. Then the air is almost chilly, and the cactus flowers are fresh and lovely. Birds of many kinds seem to be everywhere. Some of them are wonderful singers, too. The dry sand is covered with their tracks and those of other crea-tures. But soon the birds and animals will fee the heat and leave the open desert to the strange shapes and beautiful colors of the cacti.
Author's Note from Lumna10 would you believe me if I told you the text of this story was way of its pictures in fact the people forgot to talk about one right here up above this paragraph. You'd think people would have instantly noticed this right away.