organ-cactus

Definitions

noun A giant cactus with simple columnar stems, Cereus marginatus, much used for hedges in Mexico, especially in the states of San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, and Guanajuato. It takes its common name from the resemblance of its rows of parallel stems to the pipes of an organ. Its flowers are inconspicuous and its fruit, unlike the pitahayas of many other species of Cereus, are not edible.
noun A name given to other columnar cacti, including Cereus eburneus of southern Mexico, which bears edible fruit and is also planted in hedges, and the giant saguaro of the south-western United States, Cereus giganteus. See saguaro and pitahaya.

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She went up to her room, pausing at the corridor window to look out at the savage little hills that stood at the back of the hotel in desiccated heaps, with the dark-green bulks of organ-cactus sticking up mechanically and sinister, sombre in all the glare.

The Plumed Serpent 2003
It was a place with a strange atmosphere: stony, hard, broken, with round cruel hills and the many-fluted bunches of the organ-cactus behind the old house, and an ancient road trailing past, deep in ancient dust.

The Plumed Serpent 2003
The jungle, however, died out, and the train crawled at a snail's pace, often looping back upon itself, through landscapes in which the organ-cactus was most conspicuous.

Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras — Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond Harry Alverson Franck 1921
On the crest of a sand-billow sprawled a huge organ-cactus, brandishing its arms in gnomish derision of their presence.

Success A Novel Samuel Hopkins Adams 1914
The same light gleams upon the fluted columns of the great organ-cactus, upon agaves and bromelias, upon the silvery _tillandsia_, that drapes the tall trees as with a toga.

The War Trail The Hunt of the Wild Horse Mayne Reid 1850