Peyote, also known as Lophophora williamsii, is a small cactus with no spines that grows mainly in south-eastern Mexico and southern Texas. Because of its strong psychoactive effect, Peyot has a long history of ritual, religious and magical use by Native Indians for whom, we must say, growing hallucinogenic cacti has been common since time immemorial and this type of household activity has gained a strong cultural basis.

The ancient Aztec tribes began cultivating this psychedelic cactus centuries ago. Aztec priests used to chew reach the state when they could unfold a more subtle matter. Such psychedelic trips were usually accompanied with whispering of prayers and spells, which gradually culminated in some illegible mutter similar to baby talk. It was believed that the use of the peyote cactus can lead to direct connection with the gods. During these cactus rituals ancient Indians could see faces of the gods and get in contact with spirits of the dead. Needles to say that even nowadays there are people (and they are not only Native Americans) who believe in the miraculous effect of peyote and use it for the same purpose.

In ancient times there was no necessity to go to witches and fortune tellers to know ones future. It was enough just to shove a piece of Peyote or San Pedro cactus, or hallucinogenic mushrooms in one’s mouth and the future could be seen in full view. A lot of natives often went mad being under the influence of psychotropic cacti and hallucinogenic mushrooms. They were haunted by morbid visions of strange people coming from the outside to eradicate their culture and to build Silicon Valley and Hollywood on its bones. And those strangers were probably bloodthirsty Spaniards and those who followed.

Сactus Peyote contains psychotropic substance mescaline, a potent natural hallucinogen that may lead to psychological dependence after long use and bring harm to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. That is why peyote is forbidden almost everywhere in the world. So all fans of entheogens and ethnobotany who want to taste the fruit forbidden and take an adventure should be warned: it’s gonna be a long one.

Have you ever been to or have you ever seen the pictures of the Andes or the Cordilleras? These are the places of such cactus types as astrophytum, cleistocactus, echinopsis, lobivia, notocactus, oreocereus, rebutia and others. Naked, forbidding rocks rise above stony gorges, and huge woolly blooming cereuses grow on these rocky walls. It seems incredible, as you can never tell what they cling to and how they survive: at a daytime they are scorched by the bright and merciless sun, at night they freeze in the cold mountain air. These types of cactus would die, if they had no means of protection as attire of fuzz, prickles and setae. The dense woolly cover protects the green stalk from sunburns and supercooling.

Mountain cacti – pillar-shaped oreocereus and spherical lobivia – suffer from the lack of the sunlight even more than desert cacti. They quickly start “to grow bald”, losing dense prickles and fuzz. They can frequently perish from rotting of the stalk. Damp humus soil is especially baneful for these types of cactus. The dwarf rebutia growing on mountain meadows and in intermountain troughs endures it much better. Many of these cactuses are dressed in a proofing of white or golden setae.

If you keep these cactus types dry and cold (3-5 °) in winter and give them enough sunlight in summer, they will excellently grow and blossom already at the age of two years.

When we hear the word “desert” we usually imagine Sahara or Kara-Kum with their scorching sand-dunes devoid of any vegetation. But the soil of stony deserts of Central and South America is very rich in all necessary salts for cacti. Though its contains very little amount of humus, water dissolves salts and the plant can absorb them.

But if rains are extremely rare here, where does water comes from? Plentiful dews, falling at night and flowing down between ribs of cacti, the night fogs accumulating on prickly stalks – this is a poor water diet of desert types of cactus growing in Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador.

Roots of many cacti of these places are radish-shaped and are capable to save water within, or ramify widely near the surface. To reduce moisture evaporation, cacti aspire to curtail the area of the stalk surface. That’s why they have either spherical or a short cylindrical form.

Desert cactus types are not afraid of burning sun: some of them have thick and dense thin skin, which becomes flat and “hides” in the ground for the period of droughts; some have high sharp ribs causing shade; others are covered with dense prickles or setae, looking like a brush.

For their correct development desert types of cactus require much sun, soil containing little humus and careful watering. They can easily die because of water stagnation in the ground even during summer heat.

The word savanna usually means vast territories of grass plains, covered with herbage, isolated islets of undersized trees and bushes. Its distinctive features are a long dry period without rain falling on winter and spring months, and plentiful rains and thunderstorms in summertime. Fluctuations in temperature reach 20 °C and more.

Such climate is considered to be the most favorable for cactus types growing on these plains. The most popular of them are coryphanta and mammillaria. These types of cactus excellently bear dry and cool winter and need a lot of warmth, sun and watering in summer, but they are afraid of water stagnation near their roots. The soil for these cacti should contain less humus, than the soil for forest cactus species, and it should have an admixture of loam.

By the way, the majority of savanna cacti, especially undersized ones like mammillaria, grow well in penumbra. In natural conditions they hide from the sun in thick grass.

Forest saguaros have thin and flexible creeping stalks and air roots on them, which deliver additional moisture from the air. As a rule, saguaros grow close to the edges of the forest, where there is more light and the air circulates freely between the trees. In case of drought their stalks wrinkle, but with the first rain they become juicy and green again. That’s why these types of cactus belong to another group of cacti – to xerophytes. This group is much bigger than the group of epiphytes, and includes various species from different areas of habitation.

Hylocereinae already have the means of protection from the excessive water evaporation or overheat of the stalk. For example, grey wax bloom and short but strong thorns of celenicereus, a countless number of small setaceous barbs of aporocactus and chamaecereus, etc.

Growing just by the sea, very close to the surfs, such types of cactus as melocacti are sometimes washed and taken away by the water. You can find them along warm coast of Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Cuba, but most of these cactus types grow on the islands of West Indies. One legend says that the first melocacti come exactly from those places. Caught from the sea by sailors, they quickly spread in Europe.

As a matter of fact, melocactus was one of the first cacti got to Europe and described in botanical books.

The roots of seashore cacti extend far under the surface of sand ground to gather more fresh rainwater. All year long these cacti need warmth (about 20°C) and humid air; therefore it’s extremely difficult to grow them as houseplants. They prefer mainly sand soil with an admixture of loam and humus, and they can’t bear alkalic soil.

Thick leaves always cover these types of cactus from the sun, causing shading, that’s why they don’t need to have such means of protection against overheat of the stalk like a thick skin, a wax bloom or fuzz.

Epiphytic cactus types grow in damp atmosphere and they have no need at all to save water. They absorb it from the moist air around thanks to a bulk of stomae on their wide stalks. You can always recognize these cactus types: their stalks consist of many thin sprouts, and they look like dendritic leaf-shaped plates. They are bare and unprotected and need warmth and moisture the whole year round. Following the advice of many cactus specialists I’ve placed my schlumbergera bridgesii (Christmas cactus) in the aquarium covered by glass.

For example, one book said that epiphytic cacti (growing on trees) couldn’t bear lower temperature and overdry conditions. But I had several Selenicereus cactuses, that were typical epiphytes, which could stand cold and dry wintering without much trouble. Why? I did not understand.

Another book advised not to subject cacti “originating from tropical forests of Brazil” to difficulties of severe wintering. I had some cactuses which native land was Brazil, but I did not know whether they were tropical or not.

The third author warned against overdrying of “tillered wood cactuses”, but some pages on he advised to keep Chamaecereus “as chilly as possible” during wintering. But as far as I know this type of cactus is both wood and tillered! Where should I search for the keys to all these riddles?

The first gleams of understanding came unexpectedly. Some friends of mine gave me several photos of cactuses that they had by chance and didn’t need anymore. Somebody of them advised me for fun to arrange a photo album of “thorny friends”, and this idea turned to be very fruitful. I picked more and more photos, but I pasted them not in the album, but on separate sheets of dense paper where I could also write down everything, that I learned about this or that cactus: the name, the description, data on culture and, of course, the native land.

And when I collected several hundreds of these cards, I often went through them and it served me right: soon I could those cacti? which suffered from dry cold. Some names were similar, some were different, but the outward similarity of certain cactus species was evident. Yes, they all were epiphytes and they all tillered. The majority of them really originated from Brazil, though for the some of them the native land was Jamaica, West Indies and even Mexico.

But the most surprising fact was that despite different names and places of origin all these tillered epiphytes had one common feature – they all had bare stalks. Their bright green thin skin was not protected by neither hairs, nor thorns, nor grey wax film. Only several tiny and thin seti. They all looked rather defenseless in comparison with other cactus species.

And this very defenselessness turned out to be the key to the riddle that I could not solve. I understood why this feature was developed – because of tropical forest conditions.

The first cactus subfamily is called Pereskioideae. It comprises cacti with right and completely developed leaves. These cacti are very few, and the subfamily Pereskioideae is the smallest. Only 26 cactus species are included in it.

The second subfamily is Opuntioideae. It unites about 400 species that have two distinctive features: first, they all have rudimentary triangular or subulate leaflets; second, on the top of their arealas there are bunches of thin, jagged setas named glochidia. They keep on the stem very poorly are can be separated from it at the slightest touch, clinging to hands and clothes. So in order to prevent troubles, it is necessary to remember about it while caring for prickly pear cactus.All the other cacti, that is more than 2000 species, belong to the third subfamily Cactoideae. The majority of popular cacti are Cactoideae. Their distinctive features are: the absence of any leaves on the stem and the absense of glochidia on areolas.