HOW THE CACTUS GOT ITS SPINES
-AND HOW IT LOST THEM
A SIDELIGHT ON
THE IMPORTANCE OF ENVIRONMENT
T IS the acre-and-a-quarter patch of spineless
cactus on Luther Burbank's experiment farm
which first strikes the visitor's eye. In the
same yard there are 2500 other experiments under
way-new flowers, fruits, vegetables, trees and
plants of all descriptions such as man has never
before seen, but the velvet slabbed cactus-freed
from its thorns-seems more than a plant trans-
formation, it seems a miracle. Since the spineless
cactus represents the typical Burbank boldness
of conception, and reflects the typical Burbank
skillful execution, we may as well begin with it.
It occurred to Luther Burbank one day that
every plant growing on the desert was either
bitter, or poisonous, or spiny. It was this simple
observation which gave him the idea of this new
plant-a plant which already has shown its
ability to outdo alfalfa five to one, and which
promises to support our cattle on what have been
the waste places of the world; so that our
ranges may be turned into gardens to produce the
vegetable sustenance for a multiplying population.
Let us' look at the life story of the cactus as
it unfolded itself to Luther Burbank when he
realized the importance of the simple fact that
desert plants are usually bitter, poisonous, or
spiny.
"Here are plants," thought he, "which have the
hardiness to live, and to thrive, and to perpetuate
themselves, under conditions in which other
plants would die in a day or a month.
"Here are plants which, although there may
be tot a drop of rain for a year, two years, or even
ten, still contrive to get enough moisture out of
the deep soil and out of the air, to build up a
structure which, by weight, is ninety-two per cent.
water-plants which contrive to absorb from the
scorching desert, and to protect from the withering
sun, enough moisture to make them nearly as
juicy as watermelons.
"Here are plants which are veritable wells of
water, growing in a. land where' there are no
springs, or brooks-nor even clouds to encourage
the hope of a cooling rain; here are plants which
are rich in nutriment for man and for beast, here
in the desert where the demand for food is the
most acute-and the supply of it the most scanty.
"And here they are, ruined for every useful
purpose, by the bitterness which makes them
inedible, or the poison which sickens or kills, or
the spiny armor which places their store of nutri-
ment and moisture beyond reach.
"There must be some reason for that bitterness,
that poison, those spines.
"What other reason could there be than that
these are Nature's provisions for self defense?
"Here are the sagebrush, with a bitterness as
irritant, almost, as the sting of a bee, the euphorbia
as poisonous as a snake, the cactus as well
armored as a porcupine-and for the same reason
that bees have stings, that snakes have fangs,
that porcupines have arrow-like spines-for self
protection from some stronger enemy which seeks
to destroy."
* * * * *
Self preservation comes before self sacrifice,
apparently, in plant life just as it does in human
life.
The plum trees in our orchards outdo each
other in bearing fruit to please us; the geraniums
in our doorvards compete to see which may give
us the greatest delight.
But may it not be because, for generations, we
have fostered them, and nurtured them, and cared
for them?
May it not be because we have made it easy for
them to live and to thrive?
May it not be because we have relieved them
of the responsibility of defense and reproduction,
that they have rewarded our kindly care by
fruiting and blooming, not for their own selfish
ends, but for us?
No man was ever kind to a cactus; no man ever
cultivated the sagebrush; no man ever cherished
the poisonous euphorbia.
Is it, then, to be wondered at that the primal
instinct of self preservation has prevailed-that
what might have been a food plant equal to the
plum transformed itself into a wild porcupine
among plants?
That what might have been as useful to the
horse as hay changed its nature and became bitter,
woody, inedible?
That what might have been a welcome friend
to the weary desert traveler grew up, instead, into
a poisonous enemy?
* * * * *
"If the bitterness, the poison and the spines
are means of self defense," thought Mr. Burbank,
"then they must be means which have been
acquired. The plants were here before there were
animals to feed on or destroy them, so there must
have been a time in their history when they had
no need for such defense.
"It must be true, then, that away back in their
ancestry there were desert sagebrushes which
were not bitter, desert euphorbias which were not
poisonous, and desert cactus plants which had
not even the suspicion of a spine. It could only
be the long continued danger of destruction
which could have produced so radical a means of
defense.
"We have, then, but to take these plants back
to a period in their history before defense had
become a problem-in order to produce an edible
sagebrush, a non-poisonous euphorbia, a spineless
cactus."
How, in a dozen years, Mr. Burbank carried the
cactus back ages in its ancestry, how he proved
beyond question by planting a thousand cactus
seeds that the spiny cactus descended from a
smooth slabbed line of forefathers-how he
brought forth a new race without the suspicion
of a spine, and with a velvet skin, and how he so
re-established these old characteristics that the
result was fixed and permanent - all of these
things will be explained in due course where the
discoveries involved and the working methods
employed may be made applicable, as well, to the
improvement of other plants.
It suffices, here, to say that, beginning with his
simple observation and reading the history of the
cactus from its present-day appearance, he was
able to see outlined before him the method by
which a plant yielding rich food and forage has
been produced, which, more than any other plant,
promises to solve the present-day problem of
higher living costs.
* * * * *
"But, Mr. Burbank," asked a visitor at the Santa
Rosa Experiment Farm, "do you mean that the
cactus foresaw the coming of an enemy which was
to destroy it? Is it believable that a plant, like
a nation expecting war, could armor itself in
advance of the necessity? And if the cactus did
not know that an enemy was later to destroy it,
would it not have been destroyed by the enemy
before it had the opportunity of preparing a means
of defense?"
Let us look into the history of the plant as it
revealed itself to Mr. Burbank and see the answer
to these questions.
* * * * *
The likelihood is that parts of Nevada, Arizona,
Utah and Northern Mexico were once a great
inland sea-that the deserts now there were the
bed of that sea before it began its long process of
leakage or evaporation.
In these regions, so far as is known, the North
American cactus seems to have originated.
Back in the ages before the evaporation of the
inland sea was complete, the heat and the moisture
and the chemical constituents of the sandy soil
combined to give many plants an opportunity to
thrive. Among these was the cactus, which was
an entirely different plant in appearance from
the cactus of today, no doubt, with well defined
stalks and a multitude of leaves, each as broad as
a man's head.
As the heat, which had lifted away the inland
sea, began to parch its bottom, the cactus, with the
same tendency that is shown by every other plant
and every other living thing, began to adapt itself
to the changing conditions.
It gradually dropped its leaves in order to
prevent too rapid transpiration of the precious
life-supporting moisture. It sent its roots deeper
and deeper into the damp sub-stratum which the
sun had not yet reached. It thickened its stalks
into broad slabs. It lowered its main source of
life and sustenance far beneath the surface of the
ground and found it possible, thus, to persist and
to prosper.
Perhaps there were, in the making of the