The first time I tried to harvest fruit from that [prickly pear plant], I thought, "Oh! This is gonna be easy! I can see the spines, really really clearly. All I have to do is just kinda grab between the spines." BAD IDEA. Because lurking around all those big, conspicuous thorns, are many more, nearly microscopic ones called glochids, or glochidia. And these are hairy little demons straight from the fires of Hades. They are the worst. [...] If you look with a much more powerful microscope, you can see the glochids are barbed. All you have to do is brush past them and they'll hook into your skin and release from the plant.
—Adam Ragusea, "How to eat cactus without impaling yourself
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"Sex is something you can practice, anywhere but on a cactus.
—Allan Sherman, "Sex is Better!"
"No, pat, no! Don't sit on that!"
—Kids, referring to a cactus, Hop on Pop
The idea that maybe you'll become interested in sex if you try it out is a compelling one. The thinking goes, how can you really know if you're not interested if you don't give it a shot? Well, the answer is that you really can know. After all, you don't have to hug a saguaro cactus to know that would be unpleasant.
"So, why were you rolling around in a Cypirion cactus?"
—Nurse Alyssa Ogawa, Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Genesis"
