Going For A Guinness

Riddle: "May Day! May Day! May Day! May Day!" shouted an angry wife to her cringing husband. "This is my official warning for you to remove that dead plant from this house before the stroke of midnight tonight!" "But it holds a lot of sweet memories from last year for me," responded her husband. His wife fired back with, "Today is the first of May, and you should have removed your precious plant from the premises months ago. Besides, it is both dead and brown and is now as sharp as a cactus, and to top it off, it has become a genuine fire hazard." Her husband sheepishly answered her by saying,” Well, I was hoping to set a Guinness world record for the family; but if I must dispose of it, the least you can do is help me remove all the shiny stuff from it first. What kind of a plant do you suppose this was which could create such a strange-sounding argument between this husband and wife?