The Poetics of Outer Toughness and Inner Tenderness: Gorgeous 19th-Century Engravings of Cacti

A succulent serenade to the elegant geometry of spiny splendor.

Among the oddities of my childhood in communist Bulgaria was my mother’s collection of cacti. Against the chipped grey concrete of our apartment building, these improbable emissaries of another climate from another world stood as spiked sentinels of a fantastical optimism at the portal to another life.

Each winter, we brought the entire ensemble — dozens of them, all kinds of shapes and sizes and species — indoors; each...