* The son of a farmer, he attended Vermont University, in 1859, but had to leave in the first year, after his elder brother died, and he had to help his widowed mother run the family farm.He planted new orchards etc and became interested in cross breeding potatoes. His first success was, known as 'Snowflake', and another 'Ruby', in 1870, won an award from the Royal Horticultural Society, in the UK.

* Cyrus Pringle was from a Scottish Presbyterian background, but had became a Quaker. In 1863, during the American Civil War he refused to fight, or for anyone in his family to pay the $300 to get him out of having to serve, as he believed that the money would be used to train other conscripts. He, along with two other Vermont Quakers were imprisoned, they even refused to serve in hospitals. They were then sent to the front and made to carry guns, but still refused. At one point he was tightly bound, stretched & staked to the ground in a x shape for hours as a punishment. Eventually, when they were in poor health, President Lincoln, (who had a respect and sympathy for Quakers) personally ordered they be allowed to return home.

* Throughout the 1870's he embarked on a number of plant hunting trips throughout the states of New England, which culminated in a display of new plants he had discovered, at the World Fair, in Paris, in 1878.

* In the 1880's, working for the Smithsonian Institution, he carried out a botanical survey in Arizona and then Mexico.

* In total Cyrus Pringle discovered about 1,200 new plant species during his plant hunting career, and has six plants named after him. This puts him in the top 5 most prolific plant discoverers in the World.

* Cobaea Pringlei, is the plant on Twitter that introduced me to Cyrus Pringle.It is native to Mexico, but can be grown in the UK, as a perennial climbing plant. It has white, trumpet flowers that bloom in September, until frosts, and grow 5 to 7 metres in height.

* He discovered a pine native to South Mexico, Pinus Pringlei, more commonly known as Pringle's Pine. It grows in the Sierra Madre del Sur and parts of the 'Eje Volcánico Transversal' at an elevation of between 1,500 and 2,600 metres.

* He died in 1911, aged 73.

* Cypringlea is a new Genus of Sedges from Mexico, that were named in his honour, in 2003.

* The Plant Biology Department at the University of Vermont, is named after him and is known as The Pringle Herbarium

* Pachycereus pringlei is a huge cactus he discovered in North West Mexico.