Symbol of Scotland;
Eeyore's trademark flower and meal;
and favorite of butterflies everywhere.

Thistles:

Grow where nothing else will;
voluntarily blossom where nothing else will;
defy herbicides to grow and bloom in barren spots that nobody seems to love;
are rarely fed or tended to, but still thrive to serve nectar to butterflies;
don't listen to disparaging remarks about themselves;
if they happen to hear disparaging remarks about themselves they blossom anyway;
do not need greenhouses;
don't mind that A.A. Milne put Eeyore in them and eating them to show how pitiful he was;
do not need fertilizer;
not unlike some prickly people, are quite soft to the touch once one gets past the prickles;
blossom, ironically, in a vivid shade of fuschia;
are inexplicably, universally unloved...except by Scots.