  The cactus of a pointed graph is a discrete tree associated with this graph.
Similarly, with every pointed geodesic metric space $E$, one can associate an
$\R$-tree called the continuous cactus of $E$. We prove under general
assumptions that the cactus of random planar maps distributed according to
Boltzmann weights and conditioned to have a fixed large number of vertices
converges in distribution to a limiting space called the Brownian cactus, in
the Gromov-Hausdorff sense. Moreover, the Brownian cactus can be interpreted as
the continuous cactus of the so-called Brownian map.
