Brambles

Rudolph Boysen experimented with crossing blackberries, raspberries, and loganberries in Napa Valley in the early 1920s, but after breaking his back in an accident, largely abandoned the project. USDA berry specialist George Darrow later tracked Boysen down on a tip, and by the time grower Walter Knott arrived, only a handful of neglected, wilted vines remained. Knott nursed them back to health at his farm — later Knott's Berry Farm — and, working with the USDA, named the fruit in Boysen's honor. Boysen himself never profited from his own discovery.

The University of Arkansas runs a long-standing blackberry breeding program that has released a series of thornless, erect varieties named after Native American tribes — Apache, Arapaho, Navaho, and others. Its Prime-Ark line pioneered primocane-fruiting blackberries, which bear fruit on first-year canes, giving growers two harvest windows in a single season instead of one.