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Among the very numerous wild seedling Opuntias, partially thornless ones have appeared from time to time and these have been growing generally unnoticed here and there in every part of the earth where the thorny ones grew, the seeds no doubt scattered by birds and other agencies. Some of these bore good fruits and have been locally cultivated, but so far none have received specific horticultural names or descriptions even though the fruits of both these and the thorny ones have long been used extensively as food and are the principal source of food for millions of human beings for about three months in each year.
Systematic work for their improvement has shown how pliable and readily molded is this unique, hardy denizen of rocky, drought-cursed, wind-swept, sun-blistered districts and how readily it adapts itself to more fertile soils and how rapidly it improves under cultivation and improved conditions.
Some one asks: "Won't they run wild again and produce thorns, when placed under desert conditions." Has the "Burbank" plum which though introduced twenty-two years ago and is now more widely grown than any other plum on this earth, shown a tendency to be different in Africa, Borneo, Japan, Egypt, Madagascar or France? No, it is the same everywhere and the residents of Chicago, Auckland, London, San Francisco, New York and Valparaiso consume them in great (and rapidly increasing) numbers of carloads each season. The same may be said of the later introduced Wickson, America, and numerous other plums and of my improved fruits and flowers, which are extensively grown and generally offered for sale by most responsible firms in all civilized countries. They are generally slowly but very surely replacing the old and heretofore standard varieties.
It will be so with these "new creations" in Opuntia, which I now offer for the first time. Thousands and thousands of others not now ready to be distributed are under test, this preliminary circular partially describing only the beginnings of a great work with the Opuntias.
Does this work which I have only just briefly outlined mean anything? Intelligent stock raisers everywhere know well that it means a new agricultural era for whole continents like Australia and Africa and millions of otherwise useless acres in North and South America, Europe and Asia. During the past two years the United States Department of Agriculture have dispatched agents to all parts where cacti grow to look up this matter. Last season they gave some valuable information* gathered from those who had for years been feeding the wild, thorny ones to their stock with good results when properly prepared by fire. It is acknowledged that thus prepared a portion of their nutritive value is lost and though the dangers of loss from feeding to stock are lessened, are not by any means made safe, even by singeing or any other process. Meanwhile, many of these new thornless ones are as safe to handle and as safe to feed as beets, potatoes, carrots or pumpkins.
But let it be understood that these thorns are not growing on the wild Opuntias for ornament any more than poison fangs, teeth, claws and stings are possessed by various animals. They are for defense, and when deprived of these defenses they must be protected from stock like any other feed grown in farm, fields or gardens. Still some doubter who has no knowledge of desert conditions will say, "Will it pay?" Does anything pay? Some people seem to think that corn, wheat, oats, barley, cotton, rice, tobacco, melons and potatoes pay. How many tons of hay, beets or potatoes can be raised each season on an acre of good soil? By actual weight in the summer of 1906 in the cool coast climate of Sonoma County, California, on heavy, black "adobe" soil, generally thought wholly unsuited for cactus, my new Opuntias produced the first year, six months from single rooted leaves, planted about June 1st, an average of 47 1/2 pounds per plant on one-fourth acre, yielding at the distance planted (2 1/2x5 feet) at the rate of 180,230 pounds (over ninety tons) of forage per acre. Some of the best varieties produced very much above this average, though planted much too closely for permanent field culture; yet these notes are of interest on a subject of which little has been known. These Opuntias are always expected to produce nearly or quite double as much feed the second and succeeding years as they do the first season of planting. Yet, I would not expect one-fourth the above yield on desert soil without irrigation but would expect nearly or quite twice as much as the yield mentioned above in a very warm climate with one or two light irrigations each season.
These improved Opuntias must of course be fenced from stock, with the leaves to be fed to the stock when most needed. In countries where great numbers of valuable stock are lost in times of unusual drought they will be of inestimable value. They will also prove of great value in less arid countries as a common farm or orchard crop even on the best agricultural soils but more especially on barren, rocky, hill and mountain sides and gravelly river beds which are now of no use whatever.
The small, hard, wild thorny cactus has been a common everyday food for horses, camels, mules oxen, growing and beef stock, dairy cows, pigs and poultry for more than fifty years. Although millions have died from the thorns,t, no systematic work for their improvement had been taken up until some fifteen years ago. Now agriculturists and horticulturists in every land are deeply interested and the governments of many counties are taking measures to secure a stock of the improved Opuntias to avoid, if possible, the too common occurrence of famines. For the Opuntias can remain uncultivated and undisturbed year after year, constantly increasing in size and weight until needed. Then each acre will preserve the lives of hundreds of human beings for months until other food can be obtained.
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Though the wild cactus is generally prepared for stock by singeing the thorns with fire, yet this never destroys the numerous bundles of innumerable needles imbedded in the leaves and cannot always remove all of the larger thorns even. Those who have fed the wild cactus extensively acknowledge that cattle are often seen with blood dripping from their mouths, and that their throats and tongues become at last inflamed, very painful and hard like a piece of sole leather. How would you enjoy being fed on needles, fishhooks, toothpicks, barbed wire fence, nettles and chestnut burrs? The wild, thorny cactus is and always must be more or less of a pest. Millions of cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, ostriches and other animals have been destroyed by it. The best newer thornless ones will with-stand frost, flood, drought, heat, wind and poor soil as well as the wild ones and will produce ten tons of fairly good food where the average wild ones will produce one ton of poor food.
* "The Prickly Pear and other Cacti as Food for Stock." Bureau of Animal Industry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 174.
t The wild cactus is prepared by boiling or steaming in Australia in times of drought, but even though great loss of stock is sometimes reported when thus prepared, some are saved from otherwise certain starvation.
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