The iconic cactus used to shorthand indicate "this is a desert" -- and even include in picture books set in Australia.

Or as the toddler calls them, "beeg cak-tus." Lovely things -- they're the middle of blooming right now, and every night on each cactus another dozen or more white trumpets open, a couple inches across and with a stem a little longer than that. In a month or so (around the solstice) is harvest season for the fruit -- oblong bulbs a couple inches long, green-skinned with red pulp and several hundred tiny black seeds.

---L.