_Bonkeræ_, or the Short Spined Strawberry Cactus, is oblong-cylindrical with the tips somewhat depressed. It has low obtuse ridges, fewer than twenty, of a light green. These ridges are covered with a network of radial spines, the younger ones whitish, fading to gray-white, yellow or yellowish brown in age. The centrals are yellow-brown changing to red-brown in older thorns. All the spines are less than a half-inch long and vary in coloring, with brown bulbous bases and translucent tips. This cactus is to be found in clusters of from two to ten stems, and is very attractive with its rose-purple to deep rose-purple flowers nearly three inches long, and its many stamens, stigmas, and filaments in bright and light green. The fourteen petals and nine sepals have obtuse tips and short points; the styles are longer than the stamens. Plants grow along the dry foothills and low mountains in clumps of a foot or less across. How to grow This species grows outdoors and is not injured by temperatures twenty or twenty-five degrees below freezing; in colder climates than this it must be given some protection or grown in cool, dry, sunny greenhouses. Plants may be grown at any season in gravelly or sandy clay soils with light irrigation every two or three weeks to moisten the soil during the growing season or in droughty periods. Or they may be grown readily from seed sown in sandy loam in flats or pots, with partial shade and with enough water to keep the soil moist. The species is a handsome one for rock gardens, as yet little known. Mature specimens transplanted early in spring blossom the same season. Crimson Flowered Hedgehog Cactus (_Echinocereus coccineus_) (Named _coccineus_ in allusion to the bright scarlet flowers) How to identify and how it grows _Coccineus_, or the Crimson Flowered Hedgehog Cactus, is built up of stems four to seven inches long and about two inches in diameter. The tips of the stem are rounded and covered with radial spines no more than three-quarters of an inch long. It has three central spines which are much stronger than the radials, all thorns erect and spreading. They are flask-shaped at their bases and are white to yellowish white. The flowers are a beautiful bright crimson, about three inches long, and remain open for several days before they close. The petals and sepals are thick and firm, bright scarlet, and brownish or orange toward their bases, while the tips of the petals are broadly rounded. The fruit pods are very spiny. These plants grow in dense clumps one to six feet across and two to three hundred stems in a cluster, at altitudes of five to seven thousand feet in the foothills and cañons and along the lakes in northern Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, and in oak, juniper, and pine formations of prairie lands. They prefer the gravelly clay loam of the slopes in sunny exposures and are to be found also among rocks on the high mesas. How to grow