Down beyond the next point, one day last autumn, Horace and Sylvia found
a plantation of our one New England cactus, the prickly pear (_Opuntia
opuntia_). We have it here and there in our rocky pasture; but in
greater heat and with better underfeeding it seemed a bit of a tropical
plain dropped on the eastern coast. Do you know the thing? The leaves
are shaped like the fans of a lobster's tail and sometimes are
several-jointed, smooth except for occasional tufts of very treacherous
spikes, and of a peculiar semitranslucent green; the half-double flowers
set on the leaf edges are three inches across and of a brilliant
sulphur-yellow, with tasselled stamens; the fruit is fleshy, somewhat
fig-shaped, and of a dark red when ripe--altogether a very decorative
plant, though extremely difficult to handle.
After surveying the plantation on all sides, the tongs used by the
oyster dredges suggested themselves to Horace, and thus grasped, the
prickly pears were safely moved and pegged in their new quarters with
long pieces of bent wire, the giant equivalents of the useful hairpins
that I recommended for pegging down your ferns.
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