“He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.” 

Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man

“The cactus thrives in the desert while the fern thrives in the wetland.
The fool will try to plant them in the same flowerbox.
The florist will sigh and add a wall divider and proper soil to both sides.
The grandparent will move the flowerbox halfway out of the sun.
The child will turn it around properly so that the fern is in the shade, and not the cactus.
The moral of the story?
Kids are smart.” 

Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

"Take the rose-most people think it very beautiful: I don't care for it at all. I prefer the cactus, for the simple reason that it has a more interesting personality. It has wonderfully adapted itself to its surroundings! It is the best illustration of the theory of evolution in plant life."

Charles Proteus Steinmetz