Show PLANT THAT STORES WATER desert plant which acts as a natural reservoir and will live twenty years says expert A peculiar plant function which dr macdougal and bis associates are in Is the storage of moisture by plants such as the cacti writes ellsworth huntington in harpers magazine I 1 felt as it we had become almost as skillful ab indians when we took our first drink from a chunky barrel cactus dr gal cut off the top with a big sheath knife then we pounded the pulpy interior with the butt end of a stock of the green barked pale verde tree it was bard work for our cactus was unusually large and tough little by little however the fiber broke up cool drops of sap flew into our faces at every blow and soon a mass of soft broken pulp filled the hollow which our pounding had produced in the top of the truncated cactus with our hands we squeezed the fluid out of the pulp into the hollow and then drank it a whitish but not unpalatable liquid with no special except that of plants in general all the cacti and many other desert cles of the type possess this same property of storing water the length of time that they can remain moist Is amazing dr macdougal has removed several specimens from the ground and placed them in dry air for several years no new water has been accas elble to the plants and yet year after year they keep on thriving the gourd like storage organs of the bulbous stem of an which he placed in the isea york gardens in 1902 has sent out green shoots each year at the proper aea son after producing them it has as it were drawn back part of the moisture from the stem and leaves and gone once more into dormack except at the time when it sends out leaves the plant loses water at an ex low rate aa js shown by frequent dr macdougal estimates that the plant can live at least 20 ears and possibly more it the rate of loss should diminish as it grows older compare this with any plant of moist ure regions there is scarcely one than could live 20 days let alone 20 years it pulled up by the roots and hung in a dry room desert plants are very clow in growing they are correspondingly slow in drying |