Why Do We Have Such Unattractive Cactuses and Succulents in Our Environment? In Lewis Carroll's absurdist poem "The Hunting of the Snark," published in 1876, a group of intrepid characters, including a baker, a lawyer, and a beaver, set out to capture a Boojum, a mythical creature so repulsive that looking at it will make one "softly and gently vanish away." The Los Angeles location of the Cactus Store, a bicoastal store and creative studio specialising in rare and unusual xerophytic plants, or drought-tolerant plants, welcomes guests with a potted Boojum tree (Fouquieria columnaris), a succulent native to the Valley of the Candles in Baja California, and a plaque inscribed with an excerpt from the poem. The Boojum, one of two plants in a shaded courtyard next to a greenhouse that the shop keeps as a specimen library, is roughly the size of an adult human. It looks like an upside-down parsnip with a dense mane of spiky, leafy branches that resembles a broom, pro...
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