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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Notes on cactus

I am currently looking at this LITTLE book called "A Passion For Cactus", by Jack Kramer. He uses so many adjectives to describe them, I had to share a few! Get ready!!!

Powerful, fierce, spiked, crested, armed, strange, exotic, bizarre, beautiful, jumping, dangerous, thorny, cursed, huge, small, barrel shaped, whimsical, globular, wooly, unusual, gnarled, weird, spiraling,vibrantly flowering,night blooming, fleshy, medicinal, edible, delicious, sculptural, spiny, rigid, columner, star shaped, cascading, fruiting, dagger-like, leafless, prickly, tall, small, dwarf, desert dwelling,rain forest dwelling, fearless, flat bodied, sharp, silk haired, pincushiony, erect.

Can you possibly think of any more???

BTW, according to this book, the only known instance of death by cactus was whan a man in Pheonix, Arizona who shot a giant cactus twice with his rifle, and a 23 ft. section of it fell over on top of him, killing him! This happened in 1984, and this book was published in 1995...I wonder if there have been any deaths since then?? I hope not. Please don't go around shooting at giant cactus! Of course, there is 0% chance of this happening in Florida...but be VERY careful out there in the west! LOL.

8 comments:

Kelly said...

Great adjectives! That'll teach that guy for injuring a giant cactus! I think there's laws against that. I lived in Tempe, Arizona (just outside Phoenix) for 3 years. It takes years for a cactus to grow that big, so it stinks when they shoot them all up!

Kelly

Teri said...

That is sure a LOT of descriptives!
No, I won't go shooting any cactus. :)

Julie said...

You know, on second thought, I figure you could get killed even here in Florida on a few succulents...like if you swallowed some euphorbia and died of anaphalactic shock, or you could get impaled on a giant agave or aloe plant!!!

Claude said...

seeing as that giant cactus was probably well over 200 years old, any fool who goes shooting at them probably deserves what he gets... regardless, that's quite a list of descriptives.

Serena Lewis said...

What a shame that people go around shooting at cacti like that...I'd say that particular cactus took out the ultimate revenge.

Teri said...

I tried to write the other day but blogger was being bloggy.

You KNOW how much I loved this post!

stapeliad said...

Death by Cactus...LOL

Poor guy, he was the only one. Thats got to be a little embarassing.

kathy said...

That sounds like a great book, and that he really understands and loves succulents. I'll have to check it out.

I love the death by cactus story.