Cortical Bundles in the Persistent, Photosynthetic Stems of Cacti

We examined 62 species in 45 genera of the cactus subfamily Cactoideae; all had collateral cortical bundles that permeated the broad, water-storing inner cortex and extended to the base of the outer, photosynthetic palisade cortex. Mean distance between cortical bundles was 0.75 mm, similar to the mean spacing (0.74 mm) of veins in leaves of Pereskia, a genus of relict leaf-bearing cacti. In 16 species, both young and extremely old stem cortex was available for study: in all of these, older bundles had larger amounts of phloem than did younger bundles, indicating that phloem had been produced for many years. In ten species, older bundles also had more xylem than younger bundles. In two gene…