Of islands, phonograph needles and professors..
There is an island in the Florida Keys on the Atlantic side named Indian Key, on which a reclusive botanist lived in the late 19th century with his family and bred all sorts of bizarre, huge & spiky plants for possible use as impenetrable natural fences. T. Edison apparently used of some of the particularly hard, pointy, spiky bits as a natural source for phonograph needles. Unfortunately the good professor and his entire extended family were massacred by Seminoles and the island was never again inhabited. It is now a State Park, accessible only by boat. We used to sneak out at dusk by canoe and Hobie Cat and camp overnight back in my high school years. It is still filled with otherworldly, super-spiky monster aloe/agave looking hybrids with alien looking flower stalks several stories tall.
[/threadjack]