Bitterroot Restoration

Order: Caryophyllales
Family: Cactaceae

A cactus (plural: cacti) is any member of the plant, native to the Americas. They are often used as ornamental plants, but some are also crop plants. It unusual and distinctive plants, which are adapted to extremely arid and hot environments, showing a wide range of anatomical and physiological features which conserve water. Cacti stems have adapted to become photosynthetic and succulent, while the leaves have become the spines for which cacti are well known.

Cacti come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Their flowers are large, and like the spines and branches arise from areoles. Many cactus species are night blooming, as they are pollinated by nocturnal insects or small animals, principally moths and bats. Cacti range in size from small and globular to tall and columnar.

Their leaves may also be tiny and deciduous as can be seen on new shoots of Opuntia. Spines found in the cacti are actually modified leaves. Their flowers, mostly radially symmetrical and bisexual, bloom either by day or by night, depending on the species. Their shape varies from tube-like through bell-like to wheel-shaped, and their size from 0.2 to 15–30 centimeters. Most of them have numerous sepals (from 5 to 50 or more), and change form from outside to inside, from bracts to petals. They have stamens in great numbers (from 50 to 1,500, rarely fewer). All species of cacti have a bitter mucilaginous sap contained within them. The berry-like fruits may contain few to many (3,000), seeds, which can be between 0.4 and 12 mm long.

There are two kinds of cacti grown as houseplants, and both are popular and readily familiar. The desert cacti are the "traditional" cacti, usually covered with spines or hair and often growing in paddles, balls or obelisks. Forest cacti grow in wooded areas, ranging from temperate forests to subtropical and tropical regions. Cacti are grown for protection of property from wild animals, as well as many other uses.