Cactus Block
First Appearance	Alpha 1.0.6
Type of Block	Solid Block
Stackable?	(64)
Data Values	Hex: 51 Dec: 81
Obeys Physics?
Luminosity
Transparency

A Cactus, or Cacti, is a block that spawns naturally in Desert biomes. Cacti can rarely be found on Clay that is found outside a body of water. When any entity - including the Player - touches a cactus, half a heart will be lost. Cacti are not flammable, so they do not catch on fire when over or touching lava or fire. Cacti can be placed on sand as long as the area is surrounded in sand. Cactus growth and spawning is not dependent on water, however, they can be placed beside a source of Water.

FarmingEdit

Despite cacti having little use in-game, it is still a farmable plant. There are two options for farming, automatic farms, and manual farms. Automatic farms can involve pistons and redstone to push the blocks, forcing their gravity-affected nature to come into play. The other option for cactus farming is to simply place a block above and beside the single block of cactus, whenever the cactus attempts to grow, the block will destroyed because of the cactus's inability to be adjacent to other blocks.

Special UsesEdit

Cacti will destroy any resource that come into contact with them, including harvested cacti blocks. If a player or mob dies by cacti, it is likely that many of their dropped items will be destroyed. Therefore, making traps with cacti in order to farm resources can be less efficient. Cactus can be cooked in a furnace to make cactus green dye. Cacti can be used to protect your house from monsters by using two to three-block-high cactus, and then putting a netherrack block in the ground next to the cactus, then lighting it on fire. This is a common and simple wall, which is good against all mobs however, due to mob AI can be useless. Another form of cactus defense is to surround your home with cacti in a wall, with each cactus diagonal from the next one. This is also very efficient, and is easier to make since it does not require traveling to The Nether or anything that requires difficulty to obtain. One easy way to make a farm is putting water around a cactus and put a room under the cactus to catch items.

TriviaEdit

• When a minecart hits a cactus block, the minecart is destroyed and dropped.
• Cacti can be placed next to saplings. However, the cactus will break when the tree grows.
• In the beta version of Minecraft, cacti were slightly larger when dropped.
• Spiders can climb over cacti, but are hurt in the process.
• The tops of cacti also deal damage despite the lack of spikes.
• They do not contain water like real life Cacti.
• In Pocket Edition, there is a "glitch" were cacti planted on sand in water and placed from the bottom to the top of the water will light up the sand like a torch.