Several matters regarding the botany of peyote should be discussed, for their having given rise to legends about the plant. After discussing the nefarious uses to which the Chichimeca put peyote, Hernandez writes that on this account the root scarcely issues forth, but conceals itself in the ground, as if it did not wish to harm those who discover and eat it.[7] Dr. Parsons[8] recounts a Taos origin legend in which peyote acts even more spectacularly. A warrior on the war-path heard a singing, and when he approached, the plant would go open and shut like this [the narrator moves his finger-tips close together and then opens them].... Then the plant told the Indian to come inside. But the opening was so small. Then it got bigger; it got to be a big hole in the ground, a square hole. The Indian went down the hole. There was a big hollow place down there in the ground, round like a kiva. And the story continues, telling of how the Indian learned the peyote rite from the man in the kiva. On scrutiny this appears to be the Kiowa origin legend for peyote, modified by the addition of familiar Pueblo folk-tale motifs. The Kiowa themselves say, you must look closely at peyote, because it is like a mole when it comes on top of the ground—if you don’t look closely it is gone again. These curious legends, however, are not without some histological[9] and ecological reality. In this semi-desert region the subterranean funnel-formed tap-root of the plant is covered with woody scales which form a rigid shell. Rouhier writes:[10] All this chlorophyll-region [the portion above the ground] is tumid, plump and fleshy, firm and elastic to the touch, when, after the season of heavy rains, the plant is replete and vigorous. During the hot season it droops and shrivels, becomes soft, and has a dull rumpled look. It retracts then into the rigid cylinder formed by the desiccated corky desquammated part of the stem; the plant literally gives the impression of pulling its head into its neck. (M. Diguet has told us that the plant, at this time, buries itself in the soil, as though drawn, by a powerful force of traction of its adventive radicles, at the base of the funnel which its tap-root has bored.)