Hardly you will find the house in which there is not even one room flower . Home pets, living in the majority on the windowsill, come in different kinds and genera. Their loyal fans have a family of cacti - green plants, strewn with thorns. Some of such impregnable plants even please their masters with flowering. In any case, those who are fond of their growing, will certainly be interested in what kind of homeland the cactus has. Well, let's get acquainted with this issue in more detail.
Geographical location of the homeland of a cactus
For most of us these lovely and at the same time threatening thorny plants are associated with arid conditions of the desert, which are many in Africa. That is why many inmates believe that the place where the birthplace of the cactus is - the so-called "black" continent.
In fact, "thorns" prefer desert regions, but not Africa, but other continents. Surprisingly, the birthplace of cacti are the deserts of America. More precisely, plants originated from arid places, primarily in South and North America. Scientists report that cacti appeared in South America for a long time - about 35 million years ago. Then about 5-10 million years ago cacti appeared in the northern part of the continent. In Africa, including the island of Madagascar, and the rest of the world, for example, Asia (Sri Lanka) and Australia, excluding, of course, Antarctica, the cacti were naturally moved by birds much later. The Europeans saw the latest ones with spiny representatives of the flora. It is interesting that there are cacti not only in the Mediterranean, but also on the Black Sea coast, for example, on the southern coast of the Crimea, in Gelendzhik.
An interesting fact is that across the continent, from where the color family comes from, the distribution of "thorns" is extremely uneven. Cacti can not be found at all in the humid tropical regions, in particular, they do not exist in the lands belonging to the basin of the great Amazon river. But a special variety of species is famous for Mexico. By the way, of the known two thousand kinds of "thorns" a little less than a thousand can be found in the arid regions of this country. A lot of cacti grow in such Latin American countries as Argentina, Peru, Chile, Bolivia.
Natural conditions of the homeland of a home cactus
If we talk about the natural conditions that these perennials prefer, then basically, as mentioned above, the areas are arid. By the way, there are also species that prefer not only the mountain and desert regions, but also the steppes. Even more - epiphytic cacti prefer tropical forests with high humidity. As for the acceptable composition of the soil in the homeland of the cactus, it is usually poor and light. For the soil, a small amount of humus is characteristic, but mineral salts are abundant there. But the species of cacti, which can be found in forests and steppes, grow well on heavy clay soils.
It is also interesting how different plants grow with spines. Most often there are whole thickets. Some species form so dense forest-colonies, through which it is simply impossible to get through. This is primarily characteristic of carpets, turbine carpets. There are representatives of the family of cacti that prefer to "settle" at great distances from each other. Sometimes cacti are localized in columns or rows.
The shape of the green "hedgehogs" that are found in America is diverse: spherical and slightly elongated, straight, bushy, flat or voluminous, some species even with real leaves or with bare roots.