The California Cholla is a very interesting and fascinating plant and grows as several stems two to four feet tall, branching from the base and quite erect. These stems are cylindrical yellow-green joints six to twenty-four inches long and an inch thick. They bear the usual cactuslike spicules and spines. The spicules are a light yellow semicircular mass, while the five to twenty sharp, slender needlelike spines are crowded together, a half-inch to an inch long in many instances. These are yellow but turn brown with age and have thin light yellow sheaths. The flowers are yellow tinged with red and are an inch or more in diameter and length. The fruit is tubercled and very spiny, less than an inch long, and has the peculiar characteristic of becoming quite dry when ripe. This Cholla grows best in gravelly or rocky soils in the hot interior valleys of Southern California. How to grow Though not very attractive, this Cholla is occasionally grown in cactus collections because of its rather fascinating and peculiar characteristics noted above. Young plants may be transplanted at any season; also the species can be grown from cuttings and planted in the spring in moist soil. The plants thrive in sandy or gravelly soil and may be given a light irrigation once a month during droughty periods; they grow inside or outdoors and are not injured by temperatures twenty degrees below freezing. Desert Christmas Cactus; Tasajillo (_Opuntia leptocaulis_) How to identify and how it grows _Leptocaulis_, or the Desert Christmas Cactus, is a plant growing as a dense low shrub only a foot high in many instances with numerous stems or joints ascending from the base, and in clumps three or four feet across. The little joints are sometimes only an inch long, growing to four inches in many cases, and are gray-green covered by numerous brown spicules forming in bundles. One sharp, slender, flattened, bent spine is present, a half-inch to two inches long, with a tan body and a yellow tip, covered with a white sheath which soon falls off. The flowers are a pale yellow and quite small, while the fruit forms in clusters near the ends of the branches, elliptical, about one inch long and scarlet. A fantastic phenomenon is sometimes noticed in this species: that of a branch growing directly out from a fruit. How to grow Transplant at any season. Joints broken off and partly covered with soil grow at once into new plants. Young plants also grow quite easily from seed, and ripe fruit can be gathered from the plant almost the year round. The plant has a very wide distribution, grown indoors and out of doors in almost any kind of soil with no care except to water monthly during dry periods. It is not injured by temperatures as low as zero, and with protection in winter can be grown in much colder climates. Buckhorn Cholla (_Opuntia acanthocarpa_) (Named _acanthocarpa_ from its very spiny fruit) How to identify and how it grows