It has been said, and truly, that everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry, and fierce as the animals.

The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West - Chapter 2 (p. 14), E.P. Dutton. 1977