Desert Plants Quotes

I have learned the difference between a cactus and a caucus. On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love. While I was conducting experiments to make spineless cacti, I often talked to the plants. . . . "You have nothing to fear," I would tell them. "You don't need your defensive thorns. I will protect you." Gradually the useful plant of the desert emerged in a thornless variety.

Wilf: God bless the cactuses! The Doctor: That's cactI. Alien: And that's racist!

Key West is the place where your sickly house plant back in New York grows to 10 ft. It's also the place where an 8-ft. cactus, the century plant, produces a huge yellow flower every great once in a while, like a robot proffering a bouquet. After the plant flowers, it dies.

The wild mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New Testament. . . . Its gold is as distinct a value to the eye as the nugget gold is in the pocket.

I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree.

You can't learn anything from saguaro cactus, from ocotillo. They are just passing through; their roots, their much heralded dormancy in the dry season, these are only illusions of permanence. They know even less than you do.

The cardones cactus is very similar to saguaro cactus in Arizona. These cacti only grow in very specific, particular places.

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil's fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.

There are even many huts built entirely of the universal aloe.