What鈥檚 the link between St Helena, an insect from South America and the novelist Compton Mackenzie? The answer lies inside some dog-eared paper packets, on display at the Museum of Economic Botany at Kew Gardens in London. The packets contain gramophone needles made from the wickedly sharp spines of prickly pears gathered on the island of St Helena. Mackenzie, best known for the film of his novel Whisky Galore, is less famous as founding editor of The Gramophone, the leading magazine for audiophiles. He believed cactus spines produced a far better sound than steel needles, and became one of their greatest fans.
When the BCN Gramophone Needle Company set up business in South Africa in the late 1920s, there was no shortage of prickly pears-there was a plague of them. But the company had reckoned without the efforts of the cochineal insect, introduced in a desperate attempt to rid the Cape of the cacti. They were so successful BCN had to look elsewhere for spines. And St Helena, desperately poor, with little else to export, nicely filled the gap.
鈥淎 MOST interesting and novel product,鈥� is how The Gramophone described the newfangled needles in October 1928. The long, sharp spines of the prickly pear were easily shaped to fit the grooves of a gramophone record. 鈥淭hey obtain the utmost tonal quality from the human voice, strings, piano, violin etc,鈥� claimed BCN. Unlike steel, they didn鈥檛 plough up the grooves and wear out the record.
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Back in the 1920s, music was recorded on 78s, which were played on wind-up gramophones. A needle detected the hills and dales in the disc, and the resulting vibrations were amplified mechanically to produce sound. Hard steel needles generated a lot of hiss and crackle, scoured the groove and very quickly ruined the record. BCN was the first company to offer the discerning music-lover needles made from the spines of Opuntia cacti, otherwise known as prickly pears. It began its operation in an old jam factory in Grahamstown, South Africa, buying spines by the pound from anyone tough enough to tackle the stiletto-like spikes.
Organic needles were nothing new. Needles made from bamboo slivers were patented in 1907. And at a pinch, it was possible to make do with a gooseberry thorn picked from the garden. But cactus spines were better. Trimmed and chemically hardened, BCN鈥檚 needles became popular in the late 1920s and 1930s. They were hard, but not too hard, and they could be shaped to fit the hole designed to take an ordinary steel needle. After a couple of revolutions, the needle would grind down to fit the groove so precisely that there was almost no hiss, yet the point did hardly any damage to the record.
The needles won rave reviews. 鈥淭he tone is the best I ever heard,鈥� wrote Mackenzie, the gramophone connoisseur. 鈥淚n my opinion,鈥� wrote Jan Kubelik, the Czech violinist and one of the first recording artists, 鈥渁 steel gramophone needle compared with a BCN sounds like a common violin compared with a Stradivarius.鈥� Some people stuck to cactus spines when they traded in their wind-ups for the latest electrical players.
Music-lovers might have a soft spot for prickly pears, but almost no one else did. By the turn of the century, prickly pears had become the worst weeds in history. Opuntia cacti are native to the Americas, ranging from Canada to the Strait of Magellan, but most species grow in the deserts of Mexico and the southwestern states of the US. After the Spanish colonised Mexico, they took Opuntias home with them to Spain. From there they spread through the warm, dry regions of the Mediterranean and then on to India, South Africa and eventually Australia.
It seemed a good idea at the time. Prickly pears had their uses-as unbreachable fences and as juicy fodder for livestock during times of drought. Their juice was used in making soap and candles. And the fruits of some species, denuded of their prickles, were reinvented as 鈥淚ndian figs鈥�, an essential part of Mediterranean cuisine.
The downside was that they spread like wildfire. In 1890, Kew Bulletin reported that the cacti were destroying the best land in South Africa鈥檚 Cape Province. Australia was battling with half a dozen species. One, Opuntia inermis, introduced as a pot plant in 1839, had turned 24 million hectares of cattle country into impenetrable spiny jungle by 1920. By then, the Australian government鈥檚 Prickly Pear Investigation Board had been plotting its destruction for 30 years. It tried digging them up and burning them. It tried poisoning them with arsenic. Then it tried setting a few of Opuntia鈥檚 natural enemies on it-insects that kept the cacti in check in the Americas, but which had been left behind when the prickly pear travelled to new continents.
First the government released cochineal insects from Brazil, voracious cactus-eating scale insects better known as the source of scarlet dye for British soldiers鈥� uniforms. They made a start on some species of prickly pears, but had little effect on others. Then in 1925, it let loose a moth from Argentina called Cactoblastis cactorum. The moth鈥檚 cactus-boring caterpillars restored large tracts of the country to its farmers. Following Australia鈥檚 example, South Africa imported cochineal insects in 1937. They were a huge success, rapidly clearing 750 000 hectares of prickly-pear jungle in the Cape region.
Suddenly, BCN had a problem. Prickly pears with good, long spines became hard to find. The company turned to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Where, it asked, could it find the right sort of spines? Kew鈥檚 director, Arthur Hill, knew that there were prickly pears on the tiny British dependency of St Helena in the South Atlantic. He wrote to the island鈥檚 agriculture department suggesting they send some spines for testing.
鈥淲e understand the demand for this sort of needle . . . has increased in recent years. Collection might be worthwhile and profitable to the inhabitants,鈥� Hill wrote.
鈥淯sually it is only a small percentage of the spines present on an Opuntia plant that are suitable for making needles. Once the spines reach a certain age they become brittle and have a tendency to split. Twisted or bent spines are of no use.鈥�
Fortunately for BCN, St Helena鈥檚 cacti had the right sort of spines, and some islanders were willing to pick them. Needles from the island were soon on sale thousands of miles across the water-at least until technology moved on and the old-fashioned gramophone was consigned to the antique shops.
For information on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew call +44 (0)20 8332 5622 or e-mail info@kew.org