Inside Thomas Edison’s Botanical Laboratory

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Kelly McEvers: Thomas Edison and his family had a ritual. Every winter, they would leave freezing cold New Jersey and head down to Fort Myers, Florida. Back then, Fort Myers was out there. Think swamps and mosquitoes. It was actually easier to get around by boat than over land.

The Edisons would do vacation stuff: go fishing, go on boat rides, collect interesting plants. And in 1914, they invited a different branch of American inventing royalty to join them. That year, Henry Ford, of the Model T Ford, came down to Florida with his wife, Clara.

Ford must have been psyched because Edison was actually his hero. They’d met briefly years before at a conference when Ford was still a low-level employee at an Edison company. Now they were meeting on something like equal terms.

So to celebrate the occasion, Ford had some Model Ts shipped down to Fort Myers. Everyone went out joyriding around the swamps. The cars flooded, their campsite got soaked. Clara Ford was really afraid of snakes, and there were snakes everywhere. Henry tried to scare them away by shooting off a pistol. Needless to say, it was a trip.

But soon, once the smoke from Ford’s pistol had cleared and the Model Ts had dried out, Edison and Ford would become more than just travel buddies. They were actually about to embark on an enormous inventing project, a project that would turn Edison’s Florida house into a full-fledged botanical laboratory and would become the last great obsession of Edison’s life.

I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today’s episode is brought to you in partnership with Fort Myers – Islands, Beaches and Neighborhoods. Maybe when you think of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, you think technology, cars, light bulbs, electricity. But the success of both of their inventions depended on plants. That is why they had come to Florida: to experiment.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Kelly: Plants were actually the reason Thomas Edison had fallen in love with Fort Myers in the first place. Around 30 years before that camping trip with Ford, Edison was working away in his Menlo Park lab on one of his most famous projects.

Karen Maxwell: Many people are under the misimpression he invented the light bulb. He actually perfected it.

Kelly: This is Karen Maxwell. She’s the horticulture director at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates.

Karen: So, at this time, there are about 20 different varieties of incandescent light bulbs, but none of them burned for very long.

Kelly: The problem was this teeny tiny piece inside the bulb called a filament. When electricity passes through, the filament heats up and glows and we get light. But none of these early filaments could glow long enough to make a practical light bulb.

So Edison set out to change that, testing thousands and thousands of different materials. Cotton, platinum, cedar, and finally, bamboo.

Karen: And he had his team—I’m glad I wasn’t one of them then—they stayed up and did shifts to record how long it burned. That filament burned for 1,200 hours. And that made the incandescent light bulb a national product.

Kelly: Edison, already a famous inventor, was now a legend. But by the end of the project, his personal life was a mess.

Karen: He was 38 years old, burned out, and had lost his first wife, Mary. Three children. His doctor says, Thomas, you need to go south, take a vacation, and take a break. He ends up arriving in St. Augustine during the winter and finds that is really too cold. It didn’t meet what his doctor had prescribed. So one of his friends takes him further down the river and they end up going by the property, which is currently today what we know as the Edison and Ford Winter Estates. What does he see but stands of bamboo growing along the riverside? He bought it on the spot.

Kelly: Edison remarried, and soon he and his second wife, Mina, started transforming the Florida property and its stand of bamboo into their wintertime home away from home. Edison even had an old laboratory shipped down from New Jersey in case inspiration struck while he was on vacation. You know, his lab away from lab.

At first, he did some experimenting with bamboo, but then in 1905, the invention of the tungsten filament for the light bulb made the bamboo one obsolete. Soon enough, though, he would have another project to focus on.

After the Fords joined the Edison family vacation in 1914, it was time for Ford to invite Edison on a trip. They went to San Francisco, and Ford introduced Edison to some friends: a botanist named Luther Burbank, who was interested in plant hybridization, and the tire magnate, Harvey Firestone, of Firestone Tires. It wasn’t long before their conversation turned to rubber.

And the thing was, in order to make cars, you needed tires, and in order to make tires, you needed rubber. Back then, there was no such thing as synthetic rubber. All of it came from plants. Most natural rubber was grown in Southeast Asia, in British and Dutch colonies, and that meant the British and Dutch set rubber prices. The crew became convinced that America needed its own domestic rubber supply. Edison got to work right away.

Karen: So he starts looking for a product that can grow quickly, produce latex. Latex is what makes rubber. Latex is a milky white substance. If you break open the stem, out comes a sticky white milky product. That is latex and that is the basis of all natural rubber.

Over 17,000 plants are brought in and studied. There were botanists, volunteers, they even engaged the Union Pacific Railroad, who instructed every section chief to collect any plants growing along their extensive miles of right-of-way and forward them to Edison’s laboratory.

Kelly: The Florida House essentially became a latex distilling factory. Today, if you visit, you can still see a lot of these plants that Edison was experimenting on. There’s a spiny vine called crown of thorns, which looks like a cactus; a scrubby desert shrub called guayule, which is native to Mexico; and the most spectacular specimen, or at least the biggest, was the banyan tree.

Karen: It’s been in place for 100 years. And over the years, it’s grown extensively. We’ve had to maintain trimming so it doesn’t just eat up the buildings. The first impression people have is they’re looking at a forest of trees.

Kelly: Today, the tree covers nearly an entire acre of land. It’s the largest banyan tree in the continental U.S. But unfortunately for Edison, it just did not produce enough latex.

Karen: In 1928, he discovers, right here in his backyard, the plant that produces the most latex is goldenrod.

Kelly: Goldenrod is a very fast-growing weed with yellow flowers. Looks a lot like ragweed. So Edison ripped out rows and rows of his wife Mina’s citrus trees to plant goldenrod, which I’m sure she wasn’t thrilled about.

Karen: He mows them all down and he transforms their estate-like atmosphere to just a conglomeration of disorderly beds with markers and irrigation ditches all around, 500 plots of yellow goldenrod. And as you can imagine, that did little to kindle her enthusiasm for his work.

Kelly: Speaking of Mina’s view of his work, she was annoyed about the citrus trees, yes, but she was also worried about her husband’s health. Edison was in his 80s now and still keeping pretty long hours.

Mina wrote, “He thinks of nothing else now. He has no time for anything else, no recreation,” and, “Everything turned to rubber in the family. We talked rubber, thought rubber, dreamed rubber.”

There was also some tension between her and Henry Ford. For one thing, Ford had bought the house right next door. That’s why the museum today is known as the Edison and Ford Estates. And another thing: Ford had convinced Edison to let him dismantle his Florida lab and ship it up to Michigan. Because Ford wanted to start a museum dedicated to American innovation, and he said he simply needed his hero’s lab. Mina was not too happy about this. Though, with the help of Ford and Firestone, Edison did end up building a brand new botanical lab.

Still, by the end of the 1920s, Edison’s health got worse. He came down with pneumonia and by the fall of 1931 was bedridden in New Jersey. At one point on his deathbed, as he was slipping in and out of consciousness, someone came in with a package sent from the Florida house.

Inside was a small piece of rubber made from Edison’s goldenrod plants. According to biographer Michele Albion, he had a moment of lucidity, and then sunk into a coma. Just a few days later, he died on October 18th, 1931. The Edison family kept the botanical research lab going until 1934, when it was transferred over to the Department of Agriculture.

Karen: But it turned out his vision of the importance became true because when World War II came about, Japan captured Malaysia, Singapore, and most of the Pacific Rim rubber plantations.

Kelly: During the war, there were serious rubber shortages in the U.S. The government rationed gasoline and lowered speed limits just to make tires last longer.

Karen: But it was shortly after that that synthetic rubber ended the goldenrod destiny. That was in 1944. And It was pretty much what Tungsten did for his carbonized bamboo filament, the synthetic rubber did to his goldenrod rubber research. But he was right. I mean, he kept people going in the right direction. Without that foundation, we probably wouldn’t have been here today.

Kelly: Today, the Ford and Edison Winter Estates are combined into one big museum property. You can spend hours wandering around the grounds and seeing many of the plants that we talked about in this episode. The bamboo, the goldenrod, the banyan tree, and of course, the botanical laboratory itself.

Karen: It’s a 21-acre paradise of discovery for people that enjoy gardens and enjoy the different textures, the structures, the colors. There’s something blooming every single day. Many, many things.

Kelly: In our episode description, we will post a link to more info about visiting the Edison and Ford winter estates. And if you enjoyed today’s show, check out another episode of ours called Fordlandia. It’s all about Henry Ford’s very unsuccessful attempt to start an industrial rubber town in Brazil.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM Podcasts. This episode was produced by Amanda McGowan. The production team for this episode includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Jerome Campbell, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

]]>

Inside Thomas Edison’s Botanical Laboratory

###
How Henry Ford and Thomas Edison forged a friendship that led to Edison’s final obsession: rubber.

Fort Myers

January 28, 2026

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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Your Daily Dose of Wonder

Listen and subscribe

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Kelly McEvers: Thomas Edison and his family had a ritual. Every winter, they would leave freezing cold New Jersey and head down to Fort Myers, Florida. Back then, Fort Myers was out there. Think swamps and mosquitoes. It was actually easier to get around by boat than over land.

The Edisons would do vacation stuff: go fishing, go on boat rides, collect interesting plants. And in 1914, they invited a different branch of American inventing royalty to join them. That year, Henry Ford, of the Model T Ford, came down to Florida with his wife, Clara.

Ford must have been psyched because Edison was actually his hero. They’d met briefly years before at a conference when Ford was still a low-level employee at an Edison company. Now they were meeting on something like equal terms.

So to celebrate the occasion, Ford had some Model Ts shipped down to Fort Myers. Everyone went out joyriding around the swamps. The cars flooded, their campsite got soaked. Clara Ford was really afraid of snakes, and there were snakes everywhere. Henry tried to scare them away by shooting off a pistol. Needless to say, it was a trip.

But soon, once the smoke from Ford’s pistol had cleared and the Model Ts had dried out, Edison and Ford would become more than just travel buddies. They were actually about to embark on an enormous inventing project, a project that would turn Edison’s Florida house into a full-fledged botanical laboratory and would become the last great obsession of Edison’s life.

I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today’s episode is brought to you in partnership with Fort Myers – Islands, Beaches and Neighborhoods. Maybe when you think of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, you think technology, cars, light bulbs, electricity. But the success of both of their inventions depended on plants. That is why they had come to Florida: to experiment.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

[Edison’s laboratory]

Edison’s laboratory Euku / CC BY-SA 3.0

Kelly: Plants were actually the reason Thomas Edison had fallen in love with Fort Myers in the first place. Around 30 years before that camping trip with Ford, Edison was working away in his Menlo Park lab on one of his most famous projects.

Karen Maxwell: Many people are under the misimpression he invented the light bulb. He actually perfected it.

Kelly: This is Karen Maxwell. She’s the horticulture director at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates.

Karen: So, at this time, there are about 20 different varieties of incandescent light bulbs, but none of them burned for very long.

Kelly: The problem was this teeny tiny piece inside the bulb called a filament. When electricity passes through, the filament heats up and glows and we get light. But none of these early filaments could glow long enough to make a practical light bulb.

So Edison set out to change that, testing thousands and thousands of different materials. Cotton, platinum, cedar, and finally, bamboo.

Karen: And he had his team—I’m glad I wasn’t one of them then—they stayed up and did shifts to record how long it burned. That filament burned for 1,200 hours. And that made the incandescent light bulb a national product.

Kelly: Edison, already a famous inventor, was now a legend. But by the end of the project, his personal life was a mess.

Karen: He was 38 years old, burned out, and had lost his first wife, Mary. Three children. His doctor says, Thomas, you need to go south, take a vacation, and take a break. He ends up arriving in St. Augustine during the winter and finds that is really too cold. It didn’t meet what his doctor had prescribed. So one of his friends takes him further down the river and they end up going by the property, which is currently today what we know as the Edison and Ford Winter Estates. What does he see but stands of bamboo growing along the riverside? He bought it on the spot.

Kelly: Edison remarried, and soon he and his second wife, Mina, started transforming the Florida property and its stand of bamboo into their wintertime home away from home. Edison even had an old laboratory shipped down from New Jersey in case inspiration struck while he was on vacation. You know, his lab away from lab.

At first, he did some experimenting with bamboo, but then in 1905, the invention of the tungsten filament for the light bulb made the bamboo one obsolete. Soon enough, though, he would have another project to focus on.

After the Fords joined the Edison family vacation in 1914, it was time for Ford to invite Edison on a trip. They went to San Francisco, and Ford introduced Edison to some friends: a botanist named Luther Burbank, who was interested in plant hybridization, and the tire magnate, Harvey Firestone, of Firestone Tires. It wasn’t long before their conversation turned to rubber.

And the thing was, in order to make cars, you needed tires, and in order to make tires, you needed rubber. Back then, there was no such thing as synthetic rubber. All of it came from plants. Most natural rubber was grown in Southeast Asia, in British and Dutch colonies, and that meant the British and Dutch set rubber prices. The crew became convinced that America needed its own domestic rubber supply. Edison got to work right away.

Karen: So he starts looking for a product that can grow quickly, produce latex. Latex is what makes rubber. Latex is a milky white substance. If you break open the stem, out comes a sticky white milky product. That is latex and that is the basis of all natural rubber.

Over 17,000 plants are brought in and studied. There were botanists, volunteers, they even engaged the Union Pacific Railroad, who instructed every section chief to collect any plants growing along their extensive miles of right-of-way and forward them to Edison’s laboratory.

[...]

Original source