As a creator of new plants useful to mankind as superior foods, or
because of their beauty, no man is the peer of Luther Burbank, of
Santa Rosa, California. In the words of David Starr Jordan, president
of the Leland Stanford University, "Luther Burbank is the greatest
originator of new and valuable forms of plant life of this or any
other age." "He is all that he has ever been said to be, and more,"
says Professor Bailey of Cornell University, America's chief authority
on horticulture; and the leading foreign botanist, Hugo de Vries, of
Amsterdam, admits that "in all Europe there is no one who can even
compare with Luther Burbank. He is a unique, great genius."
That last sentence explains Mr. Burbank's supremacy. He has, it must be
admitted, enjoyed unique advantages. The climate of California has been
in his favor, enabling him in some cases to raise more than one crop
in a year and to operate on a larger scale than any one else has ever
done. Of fruits alone, for instance, he has had under test at one time
"300,000 distinct varieties of plums, different in foliage, in form
of fruit, in shipping, keeping, and canning qualities, 60,000 peaches
and nectarines, five to six thousand almonds, 2,000 cherries, 2,000
pears, 1,000 grapes, 3,000 apples, 1,200 quinces, 5,000 walnuts, 5,000
chestnuts, five to six thousand berries of various kinds, with many
thousands of other fruits, flowers, and vegetables."
Such advantages, however, would not have enabled Mr. Burbank to make
his marvelous improvements along all the lines hinted at in the
quotation just made.
The world owes these choice gifts to the fact that he is a genius, an
artist, an epicure, and an enthusiast, as well as a plant breeder.
"The most obvious truth which strikes one when he attempts to make
a reflective or historical study of the improvement of our native
fruits, is the fact that in nearly every case the amelioration has come
from the force of circumstances and not from the choice or design of
men.... What has been called plant breeding is mostly discovery; or, in
other words, so far as the cultivator is concerned, it is accident,"
writes Professor Bailey, in his "Sketch of the Evolution of Our Native
Fruits." In another of his books, "Plant Breeding," after stating that
in 1892 American nurserymen were offering 878 varieties of apples, he
adds that "it is doubtful if one in the whole lot was the result of
any attempt on the part of the originator to produce a variety with
definite qualities."
[Illustration: LUTHER BURBANK]
These remarks apply to the methods of plant breeders in general. But
there are exceptions, and Luther Burbank is the most important of them
by far. True, he also had to rely on accident, such as the discovery
of a California poppy with a small crimson spot, which he gradually
enlarged till the whole flower was crimson; and it is for the purpose
of taking advantage of lucky "accidents" that he raises plants in such
unprecedented numbers. But chance is only one of his assets. He has in
his mind a mental pattern, which "is made just as real and definite
as the pattern of an inventor, or the model of a sculptor," as his
biographer remarks.
In other words, his imagination conjures a fruit improved along a
definite line in Flavor, color, size, or keeping quality, and he then
proceeds to hybridize till he has achieved the ideal he has in his
mind, though it may take a decade or longer to do it.
In one of Mr. Burbank's bulletins there is a picture of John Burroughs
sampling the "Patagonia" strawberry in its originator's garden at
Santa Rosa. In this berry Mr. Burroughs discovered "a wonderful
pineapple flavor" and pronounced it the most delicious strawberry he
had ever tasted. It is claimed for it that it is an exceptionally good
keeper, and that it can be freely eaten by those with whom the common
acid strawberries disagree. It is the result of a full quarter of a
century's patient experiments. For twenty years Mr. Burbank had, as he
frankly admits, tried in vain to improve on the finest berries in the
market. Knowing that all our best strawberries have descended wholly or
in part from one of the Chilian varieties, he got one of his collectors
in Chili, some years ago, to send him seeds of wild strawberries from
the Cordillera and from the Coast regions. Among the plants which grew
from these seeds he found some that promised to be of great value when
crossed with the best American and European strains. With his usual
Edisonian patience, he experimented until "among the very numerous
seedlings under test was found this unique berry, which was at once
recognized as the grand prize."
In this little genealogical tale we have an excellent illustration of
that "judgment as to what will likely be good and what bad" which, in
the words of Professor Bailey, is "the very core of plant-breeding,"
and in which "Burbank excels." The Burbank bulletins give many similar
instances; and in view of the fact that his rivals and others have
belittled his labors, it is proper that he should plead his own cause.
His bulletins call attention to some of the results of his methods
as compared with those of other plant-breeders. Here, for instance,
is a fact for his detractors: "Nearly 95 per cent. of the new plums
introduced since 1890, now catalogued as standards, originated on my
own farms, although nearly four times as many new varieties have been
introduced by other dealers. Most of the introductions of others are
not now generally even listed."
The Burbank plum, which was introduced less than twenty years ago, is
now perhaps more widely known than any other plum, the world over;
but, he says, "hundreds of better plums have since been produced on my
experiment farms."
The Burbank potato is now the universal standard in the Pacific
Coast States and is gradually taking the lead in the Middle West. It
originated at Mr. Burbank's home place in Massachusetts in 1873, and
was subsequently much improved by him in California. As H. S. Harwood
remarks in his admirable book on the career and the achievements of
Mr. Burbank, "New Creations in Plant Life" (the Macmillan Co.), "he
has had four main objects in view in the work: A potato with a better
flavor, one with a relatively larger amount of sugar, one that will be
a larger size and all of the same uniform shape and size, and one that
will better resist diseases and be a larger yielder than any potato
now known." In all these points he has succeeded; never, anywhere,
have I eaten potatoes so mealy, so digestible, and, above all, so rich
in Flavor as Burbank's. When first introduced in California, in 1876,
"old potato growers would have none of it, because it was _new_ and
because it was white. You will have to hunt a long time to find red
potatoes _now_," writes Mr. Burbank. J. M. Eddy, Secretary of the
Stockton Chamber of Commerce, stated in 1910 that in San Joaquin County
4,750,000 bushels, or 95 per cent. of the entire output, were Burbank
potatoes; and according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture the
Burbank potato is adding more than $17,000,000 to the farm incomes of
America alone.
"Corn is America's biggest crop. To add only one kernel to the ear of
corn means a five million bushel crop increase.
"In the best corn States, corn grows from eight to ten feet high, and
bears an average of slightly less than two ears to the stalk.
"During the past summer Luther Burbank, on his Santa Rosa experiment
farm, has grown corn sixteen feet in height, bearing thirty-two ears to
the stalk."
These statements are cited from the prospectus of the Luther Burbank
Society issued in the year 1912, relating to the twelve superbly
illustrated volumes to be published in which the Burbank discoveries
or inventions (nearly 1,300 in all) are described with full directions
as to how his methods can be applied on every farm, in every fruit
orchard, in every truck or home garden, to the delight and profit of
thousands.
One of Mr. Burbank's absolutely new creations is the _pomato_. It is
the evolution of the potato seedball, heretofore absolutely useless,
except for experimenters. "It first appears," says Mr. Harwood,
"as a tiny green ball upon the potato top, and develops as the
season progresses into a fruit the size and general shape of a small
tomato.... It is delightful to the taste, having the suggestion of
quite a number of different fruits and yet not easily identified with
any particular one.... It is fine eaten raw out of the hand, delicious
when cooked, and excellent as a preserve."
Some years ago Mr. Burbank wrote in regard to his new plants that every
one "has proved better than those known before in some new quality, in
some soils and climates. All do not thrive everywhere. Please name one
good fruit or nut that does."
The last two sentences are directed at those of his critics who
triumphantly point to cases of failure of his new products in this or
that locality. Judgment has to be used; "certain varieties which are
a success in one locality may be, and often are, a complete failure
a few miles distant, or nearby on a different soil or at a different
elevation."
The Burbank Crimson Winter Rhubarb has been offered by unprincipled
dealers in the cold Northern States, though they must have known that
it could not prove successful there. For this new type the claim is
made that it is the most valuable vegetable introduced during the
last quarter of a century. So many fortunes have been made with it in
California and Florida that it has been named "The Mortgage Lifter."
The chief forester of the Government of South Africa reports that
at Cape Town, where all other rhubarbs had been a failure for two
centuries, the Burbank Crimson Winter variety proved to be a complete
success. Yet Mr. Burbank now has a still further improved variety, the
Giant, which excels the original Crimson Winter Rhubarb "at least 400
per cent."
The list of delicacies for which American--and foreign--epicures
are indebted to this inventor includes many other vegetables,
berries, fruits, and nuts. He has not only improved the Flavor of
the blackberry, but taken away its thorns. He has created a genuine
new species by uniting the blood of the blackberry with that of the
raspberry. The phenomenal berry now in such great demand on the Pacific
Coast, was evolved from the dewberry. Burbank's Himalayan yields four
times as much by weight as any other berry, and keeps twice as long;
hence it has become "the most profitable shipping berry."
Everybody likes quince jelly and marmalade, but it remained for Mr.
Burbank to create the pineapple quince, which can be eaten out of hand
like an apple. For his improved cherry fabulous sums have been paid in
Eastern markets--over three dollars a pound in one case.
"Cauliflower is only cabbage with a college education," said Mark
Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson. What Luther Burbank is doing besides
creating entirely new fruits and vegetables, is to give the older ones
a college education. He has grown, to cite his own words, "several
millions of new fruits ... in the constant effort to eliminate faults
and substantiate virtues."
Burbank's Formosa plum blends at least fifteen different varieties in
its origin. It is "unequaled in quality," free from all disease, and
keeps remarkably well. Another of his new plums is practically without
a pit, while a third has the flavor of a Bartlett pear. Into another he
has bred "a delicious fragrance, so powerful that when left in a closed
room over night the whole apartment will be delightfully saturated
with the odor." The new Nixie plum has, when cooked, the flavor and
appearance of cranberries. It is described as "the forerunner of a
wholly new class of fruits," and as having an "almost incomparably
delicious" flavor, which it owes to the blood of the wild Sierra plum.
Some of Mr. Burbank's prunes excel the best of the French; and his
plumcot is another of the entirely new fruits he has given the world.
In creating this, he bred together a wild American plum, a Japanese
plum, and an apricot, making a fruit which differs in flavor, color and
texture from any other kind. There are already several varieties of it.
Of his successful experiments in "educating" nuts three may be
mentioned. He has made chestnut trees bear at the unheard-of early age
of a year and a half; he has created a "paper shell" walnut; and,
what is more remarkable still, he has removed from the walnut the
disagreeably bitter inside skin which makes it indigestible because of
the tannin in it.
Grapes have not been neglected. In the summer of 1911 I asked him if he
would not undertake to educate some other grapes grown in California
to the level of the Muscatels and at the same time give the Muscatel
a thicker skin to make it better able to stand transportation to the
East. He answered in a letter dated July 25, that he was "at work on
several of the California grapes to give them better flavors, thicker
skins, and better keeping qualities; and," he added, "I assure you that
I am having good success. They are not yet ready to send out."
The Newtown Pippin is one of the finest apples, but he has a descendant
of it which is a far better bearer and has "an added aromatic
fragrance." There are improved peaches, too; also, many beautiful
flowers new to the world; but of flowers this is not the place to write.
Is it not strange that this unselfish wonder-worker, whose object is
not to make money (except for the purpose of enabling him to go on
with his experiments), should have met with so much hostility? Yet he
declares that the greatest inconvenience or injustice he has met is not
misunderstanding, prejudice, envy, jealousy, or ingratitude, but the
fact that purchasers are so often deceived by unscrupulous dealers
who, misusing his name, foist upon the public hardy bananas, blue
roses, seedless watermelons, and a thousand other things, including
United States Government thorny cactus for the Burbank Thornless.
On this point Mr. Burbank has reason to write with a feeling of mingled
pride and resentment. In 1896 the first scientific experiments for the
improvement of cactus as food for man and beast were made on his farms.
Eight years later, when these costly experiments were crowned with
success, the Department of Agriculture spent $10,000 in searching for a
thornless cactus like those already produced by Mr. Burbank. The result
was a failure; the "spineless" cactus sent out were not spineless, not
safe to handle or feed to stock, while the fruit was "seedy and poor."
[Illustration: Burbank's Spineless Cactus]
The Burbank improved cactus, on the other hand, is free not only from
the long spines but from the even more harmful microscopic spicules.
It is therefore "as safe to handle and as safe to feed as beets,
potatoes, carrots or pumpkins." The new thornless varieties will
produce a hundred tons of good feed where the average wild ones will
yield only ten tons of inferior fodder. It can be grown on millions of
acres of deserts where no other edible vegetation can be raised, and
as it is possible to produce a thousand tons of feed on a single acre,
the imagination conjures up the time when beef will once more be as
abundant, as good, and as cheap as it was in the days of unlimited
pasturage.
The leaves or slabs are valuable as food for other farm animals,
including poultry.
The fruit, also, is produced in enormous quantity and is likely to
become as important in our markets as bananas and oranges. The cactus
bearing the best fruit is not yet quite spineless, but the fine
bristles on the fruits are easily removed with a small whiskbroom
before picking. Burbank's 1912 Spineless Cactus bulletin lists more
than a dozen varieties cultivated for the fruit, and fifteen varieties
raised for forage.
The cactus fruit "can be produced at less than one-tenth the expense
of producing apples, oranges, apricots, grapes, plums, or peaches."
There is never a failure in the crop, and the fruit can be stored like
apples. It will oust the injurious "fillers" and adulterants now used
by manufacturers. Excellent jams, jellies, syrups, marmalades and
preserves can be made of cactus fruit at a minimum cost. For candies
and for pickling, also, it can be used to advantage, and "the juice
from the fruits of the crimson varieties is used for coloring ices,
jelly and confectionery. No more beautiful colors can be imagined."
Mr. Burbank takes a keen delight in his new plants, and like other
artists, he likes to know that you really see and feel what he has
done. When we visited him in the summer of 1909, in company with John
Burroughs and the California poet, Charles Keeler, nothing seemed to
please him more than the proof we gave that we were actually familiar
with his creations, by our comments on the improvements he had made in
his crimson and crimson-and-gold California poppies and the wonderful
Shirleys since we last raised them, the previous summer, in our Maine
grounds. I felt like Parsifal in the enchanted garden. We had a chance
to stroke the spineless blackberry and cactus, and to taste various
kinds of berries and fruits more luscious than any that mortals have
eaten since the Garden of Eden was destroyed.
[Illustration]