When you think about Thomas Edison, you probably think about the light bulb, the phonograph or one of his other inventions but probably not his experiments with goldenrod. During the first World War, Edison and Henry Ford began to worry about the United States’ reliance on foreign rubber production and attempted to find a quickly growing plant that would contained enough latex to produce a usable rubber.  Edison finally discovered that Goldenrod contained around 12% latex, after testing 17,000 different plant species. Henry Ford even gave Edison a Model T with goldenrod-rubber tires. Unfortunately, the quality of the rubber wasn’t good enough for it to be commercially extracted.

Goldenrod for Tires