Luther Burbank
This interesting American carried out a vast amount of plant breeding procedures with much success but there were some failures that cost some Australian pastoralists mega bucks.
He developed a wide range of fruit and vegetable crops but he had a passion for the prickle pear.
He claimed we can regreen arid areas and expand crop production greatly and developed the hybrid prickly pear variety Burbank Spineless that he claimed would revolutionise dry pastoral areas and a group of wealthy Australian pastoralists bought a batch of pads for the cost of an expensive house in Sydney.
They were told the spineless prickly pears would be great food for cattle and it looked good at first, but after a couple of years the long sharp spines began to return making them dangerous to cattle when 10 cm spines lodged in their throat.
They didn't realise that the spines would return when the pears were stressed by drought.
After a few years the disaster was forgotten but there are plenty of attractive looking Burbank Spineles plants seen gardens.
A search images of this plant shows some attractive specimens.
