Burbank

Luther, an American horticulturist. He was born at Lancaster, Massachusetts, March 7, 1849. He was reared on a farm. He labored four years to develop a smooth, mealy, good-sized potato, one reasonably free from insect plagues. The Burbank potato was the result. With means obtained from selling seed potatoes, in 1875 he opened an experimental farm at Santa Rosa, California. He is the most distinguished American improver of fruits and vegetables. He has originated the Burbank potato, half a dozen valuable plums, three prunes, two choice callas, several roses, and a number of new varieties of apples, peaches, nuts, flowers, and vegetables. His grounds are a center of interest. Seemingly nothing is beyond his skill. He has even developed a white blackberry, to which he has given the name of the iceberg. Wonders are expected of a spineless cactus which, it is hoped, may prove a suitable plant for cattle on the arid plain.

Burbank's general plan of work is to hasten the process of evolution by supplying conditions as to fertility, heat, and moisture that will bring on changes more rapidly than nature would do. Of ten thousand plants, he selects a few and destroys the rest. Of many thousand descendants of these plants, he destroys all but a few and so on. Starting with a red poppy that shows a spot of yellow, he raised a plot of poppies. A few showed yellow. These he cared for and destroyed the others. Seeds from these produced a plot of poppies showing more yellow. He saved the best and destroyed the rest, until he had a variety of yellow poppies with blossoms six inches in diameter coming true from the seed. He is called the wizard of horticulture, but he resents the name, as he relies on skill, judgment, and patience, not on magic. He adopts and hastens nature's ways. See Mutation

Mr. Burbank has made no effort to make money out of his new varieties. He is too busy for that. He says his time is worth $250 an hour to the world. In a money sense, he has remained a poor man. The Carnegie Institute, however, has placed $100,000, or $10,000 a year for ten years, at his disposal, so that he is now in the very joy of carrying on his work with no lack of means. He says of his own work:

One more grain to the head of wheat, rye, barley, oats or rice; one more kernel of corn to the ear; one more potato to the hill or peach, pear, plum, orange, or nut to the tree would add millions of bushels to the world's food supply, millions of dollars to the world's wealth, not for one year only but as a permanent legacy. That is what I am trying to do.

I have here a plant school to suppress the bad and develop the good qualities of flowers, fruits, and all useful plants. I give them everything they need as a wise mother does to children--the right conditions of soil and climate and food--fertilizer. I keep the evil away, sterilizing the soil and water as you sterilize milk for infants. It takes ten generations, sometimes, for a plant to overcome a hereditary fault but the work is always rewarded in the end, and the world is the richer.

There are other plant breeders, but Luther Burbank stands alone. He is a private person pursuing his own work in his own way and because he loves it so well that he cannot forego it. He is a gardener of a new kind. Every plant appeals to him. . . . Mr. Burbank is a plain, modest, sympathetic, single-minded man. He is not a wizard. Luther Burbank stands for a great new idea in American horticulture. It is time we begin to recognize what this is. . . . He is a master worker in making plants to vary. Plants are plastic material in his hands. He is demonstrating what can be done. He is setting new ideals and novel problems. Heretofore gardeners and horticulturists have grown plants because they are useful or beautiful. Mr. Burbank grows them because he can make them take on new forms. This is a new kind of pleasure to be gotten from gardening, a new and captivating purpose in plant growing. It is a new reason for associating with plants. It is of little consequence to me whether he produces good commercial varieties or not. He has a sphere of his own and one that should appeal to a universal constituency. In this way, Luther Burbank's work is a contribution to the satisfaction of the living and is beyond all price.--L. H. Bailey, Plant Breeding.