WONDERFUL CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE
Mating Plants--Experiments of Burbank--What he has Accomplished.
In California lives a wonderful man. He has succeeded in doing more
than making two blades of grass grow where grew but one. Yearly, daily
in fact, this wizard of plant life is playing tricks on old Mother
Nature, transforming her vegetable children into different shapes and
making them no longer recognizable in their original forms. Like the
fairies in Irish mythology, this man steals away the plant babies, but
instead of leaving sickly elves in their places, he brings into the
world exceedingly healthy or lusty youngsters which grow up into a
full maturity, and develop traits of character superior to the ones
they supplant. For instance he took away the ugly, thorny insipid
cactus and replaced it by a beautiful smooth juicy one which is now
making the western deserts blossom as the rose. The name of this man
is Luther Burbank whose fame as a creator of new plants has become
world wide.
The basic principle of Burbank's plant magic comes under two heads,
viz.: breeding and selection. He mates two different species in such
a way that they will propagate a type partaking of the natures of both
but superior to either in their qualities. In order to effect the best
results from mating, he is choice in his selection of species--the
best is taken and the worst rejected. It is a universal law that the
bad can never produce the good; consequently when good is desired, as
is universally the case, bad must be eliminated. In his method, Burbank
gives the good a chance to assert itself and at the same time takes
away all opportunity from the bad. So that the latter cannot thrive
but must decay and pass out of being. He takes two plants--they may
be of the same species, but as a general rule he prefers to experiment
with those of different species; he perceives that neither one in its
present surroundings is putting forth what is naturally expected from
it, that each is either retrograding in the scale of life or standing
still for lack of encouragement to go forward. He knows that back of
these plants is a long history of evolutions from primitive beginnings
to their present stage just as in the case of man himself. 'Tis a far
cry from the cliff-dweller wielding his stone-axe and roaming nude
through the fields and forests after his prey--the wild beast--to the
lordly creature of to-day--the product of long ages of civilization
and culture, yet high as the state is to which man has been brought,
in many cases he is hemmed in and surrounded by circumstances which
preclude him from putting forth the best that is in him and showing
his full possibilities to the world. The philosopher is often hidden
in the ploughman and many a poor laborer toiling in corduroys and
fustian at the docks, in the mills, or sweeping the streets may have
as good a brain as Edison, but has not the opportunity to develop it
and show its capabilities. The same analogy is applicable to plant
life. Under adverse conditions a plant or vegetable cannot put forth
its best efforts. In a scrawny, impoverished soil, and exhausted
atmosphere, lacking the constituents of nurture, the plant will become
dwarfed and unproductive, whereas on good ground and in good air, which
have the succulent properties to nourish it the best results may be
expected. The soil and the air, therefore, from which are derived the
constituents of plant life, are indispensably necessary, but they are
not the primal principles upon which that life depends for its being.
The basis, the foundation, the origin of the life is the seed which
germinates in the soil and evolves itself into the plant.
A dead seed will not germinate, a contaminated seed may, but the plant
it produces will not be a healthy one and it will only be after a long
series of transplantings, with patience and care, that at length a
really sound plant will be obtained. The same principle holds good in
regard to the human plant. It is hard to offset an evil ancestry. The
contamination goes on from generation to generation, just as in the
case of the notorious Juke family which cost New York State hundreds
of thousands of dollars in consequence of criminality and idiocy. It
requires almost a miracle to divert an individual sprung from a corrupt
stem into a healthy, moral course of living. There must be some powerful
force brought to bear to make him break the ligatures which bind him
to ancestral nature and enable him to come forth on a plane where he
will be susceptible to the influence of what is good and noble. Such
can be done and has been accomplished.
Burbank is accomplishing such miracles in the vegetable kingdom, in
fact he is recreating species as it were and developing them to a full
fruition. Of course as in the case of the conversion of a sinner from
his evil instincts, much opposition is met and the progress at first
is slow, but finally the plant becomes fixed in its new ways and starts
forward on its new course in life. It requires patience to await the
development Burbank is a man of infinite patience. He has been five,
ten, fifteen, twenty years in producing a desired blossom, but he
considers himself well rewarded when his object has been obtained.
Thousands of experiments are going on at the same time, but in each
case years are required to achieve results, so slow is the work of
selection, the rejecting of the seemingly worthless and the eternal
choosing of the best specimens to continue the experiments.
When two plants are united to produce a third, no human intelligence
can predict just what will be the result of the union. There may be
no result at all; hence it is that Burbank does not depend on one
experiment at a time. If he did the labors of a life-time would have
little to show for their work. In breeding lilies he has used as high
as five hundred thousand plants in a single test. Such an immense
quantity gave him a great variety of selection. He culled and rejected,
and culled and rejected until he made his final selection for the last
test.
Sometimes he is very much disappointed in his anticipations. For
instance, he marks out a certain life for a flower and breeds and
selects to that end. For a time all may go according to his plans, but
suddenly some new trait develops which knocks those plans all out of
gear. The new flower may have a longer stem and narrower leaves than
either parent, while a shorter stem and broader leaves are the
desideratum. The experimenter is disappointed, but not disheartened;
he casts the flower aside and makes another selection from the same
species and again goes ahead, until his object is attained.
It may be asked how two plants are united to procure a third. The act
is based on the procreative law of nature. Plant-breeding is simply
accomplished by sifting the pollen of one plant upon the stigma of
another, this act--pollenation--resulting in fertilization, Nature in
her own mysterious ways bringing forth the new plant.
In order to get an idea of the Burbank method, let us consider some
of his most famous experiments, for instance, that in which by uniting
the potato with the tomato he has produced a new variety which has
been very aptly named the pomato. Mr. Burbank, from the beginning of
his wonderful career, has experimented much with the potato. It was
this vegetable which first brought the plant wizard into worldwide
prominence. The Burbank potato is known in all lands where the tuber
forms an article of food. It has been introduced into Ireland and
promises to be the salvation of that distressed island of which the
potato constitutes the staple diet. The Burbank potato is the hardiest
of all varieties and in this respect is well suited for the colder
climates of the Temperate Zone. Apart from this potato which bears his
name, Mr. Burbank has produced many other varieties. He has blended
wild varieties with tame ones, getting very satisfactory results. Mr.
Burbank believes that a little wild blood, so to speak, is often
necessary to give tone and vigor to the tame element which has been
long running in the same channels. Probably it was Emerson, his favorite
author, who gave him the cue for this idea. Emerson pointed out that
the city is recruited from the country. "The city would have died out,
rotted and exploded long ago," wrote the New England sage, "but that
it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country that came to
town day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day."
In Burbank's greenhouses are mated all kinds of wild and tame varieties
of potatoes, producing crosses and combinations truly wonderful as
regards shape, size, and color. One of the most palatable potatoes he
has produced is a magenta color approaching crimson, so distributed
throughout that when the tuber is cut, no matter from what angle, it
presents concentric geometric figures, some having a resemblance to
human and animal faces.
Before entering on any experiment to produce a new creation, Burbank
always takes into consideration the practical end of the experiment,
that is, what the value of the result will be as a practical factor
in commerce, how much it will benefit the race. He does not experiment
for a pastime or a novelty, but for a purpose. His object in regard
to the potato is to make it a richer, better vegetable for a food
supply and also to make it more important for other purposes in the
commerce of the nations.
The average potato consists of seventy-five per cent. water and
twenty-five per cent. dry matter, almost all of which is starch. Now
starch is a very important article from a manufacturing standpoint,
but only one-fourth of the potato is available for manufacturing, the
other three-fourths, being water, is practically waste matter. Now
if the water could be driven out to a great extent and starchy matter
increased it is easy to understand that the potato would be much
increased in value as an article of manufacture. Burbank has not
overlooked this fact in his potato experiments. He has demonstrated
that it is as easy to breed potatoes for a larger amount of starch,
and he has really developed tubers which contain at least twenty-five
per cent. more starch than the normal varieties; in other words, he
has produced potatoes which yield fifty per cent. of starch instead
of twenty-five per cent. The United States uses about $12,000,000
worth of starch every year, chiefly obtained from Indian corn and
potatoes. When the potato is made to yield double the amount of starch,
as Burbank has proved it can yield and more, it will be understood
what a large part it can be made to play in this important manufacture.
Also for the production of alcohol the potato is gaining a prominent
place. The potato starch is converted into maltose by the diastase of
malt, the maltose being easily acted upon by ferment for the actual
production of the alcohol. Therefore an increase in the starch of the
potato for this purpose alone is much to be desired.
Of course the chief prominence of the potato will still consist in its
adaptability as an article of food. Burbank does not overlook this.
He has produced and is producing potatoes with better flavor, of larger
and uniform size and which give a much greater yield to the area.
Palatability in the end decides the permanence of a food, and the
Burbank productions possess this quality in a high degree.
Burbank labored long and studied every characteristic of the potato
before attempting any experiments with the tomato. Though closely
related by family ties, the potato and the tomato seemed to have no
affinity for each other whatever. In many other instances it has also
been found that two varieties which from a certain relation might
naturally be expected to amalgamate easily have been repellant to each
other and refused to unite.
In his first experiment in trying to cross the potato and tomato,
Burbank produced tomatoes from the seeds of plants pollenated from
potato pollen only. He next produced what he called "aerial potatoes"
of very peculiar twisted shapes from a potato vine grafted on a
Ponderosa or large tomato plant. Then reversing this operation he
grafted the same kind of tomato plant upon the same kind of potato
plant and produced underground a strange-looking potato with marked
tomato characteristics. He saw he was on the right road to the
production of a new variety of vegetable, but before experimenting
further along this line he crossed two distinct species of tomatoes
and obtained a most ornamental plant, different from the parent stems,
about twelve inches high and fifteen inches across with large unusual
leaves and producing clusters of uniform globular fruit, the whole
giving a most pleasing and unique appearance. The fruit were more
palatable than the ordinary tomatoes, had better nutritive qualities
and were more suitable for preserving and canning.
Very pleased with this result he went back to his experiments with the
potato-tomato, and succeeded in producing the most wonderful and unique
fruit in the world, one which by a happy combination of the two names,
he has aptly called the pomato. It may be considered as the evolution
of a potato seed-ball. It first appears as a tiny green ball on the
potato top and as the season progresses it gradually enlarges and
finally develops into a fruit about the size and shape of the ordinary
tomato. The flesh is white and the marrow, which contains but a few
tiny white seeds, is exceedingly pleasant to the taste, possessing a
combination of several different fruit flavors, though it cannot be
identified with any one. It may be eaten either raw or cooked after
the manner of the common tomato. In either case it is most palatable,
but especially so when cooked. It is exceptionally well adapted to
preserving purposes.
The production of such a fruit from a vegetable is one of the crowning
triumphs of the California wizard. Probably it is the most novel of
all the wonderful crosses and combinations he has given to the world.
It would be impossible here to go into detail in regard to some of the
other wonders accomplished in the plant world by this modern magician.
There is only space to merely mention a few more of his successful
achievements. He has given the improved thornless and spiculess cactus,
food for man and beast, converting it into a beautifier and reclaimer
of desert wastes; the plum-cot which is an amalgamation of the plum
and the apricot with a flavor superior to both; many kinds of plums,
some without pits, others having the taste of Bartlett pears, and still
others giving out a fragrance as sweet as the rose; several varieties
of walnuts, one with a shell as thin as paper and which was so easily
broken by the birds that Burbank had to reverse his experiment somewhat
in order to get a thicker shell; another walnut has no tannin in the
meat, which is the cause of the disagreeable flavor of the ordinary
fruit; the world-famed Shasta daisy, which is a combination of the
Japanese daisy, the English daisy and the common field daisy, and which
has a blossom seven inches in diameter; a dahlia deprived of its
unpleasant odor and the scent of the magnolia blossom substituted; a
gladiolus which blooms around the entire stem like a hyacinth instead
of the old way on one side only; many kinds of lilies with chalices
and petals different from the ordinary, and exhaling perfumes as varied
as those of Oriental gardens; a poppy of such dimension that it is
from ten to twelve inches across its brilliant bloom; an amaryllis
bred up from a couple of inches to over a foot in diameter; several
kinds of fruit trees which withstand frost in bud and in flower; a
chestnut tree which bears nuts in eighteen months from the time of
seed-planting; a white blackberry (paradoxical as it may appear), a
rare and beautiful fruit and as palatable as it is beautiful; the
primusberry, a union of the raspberry and the blackberry; another
wonderful and delicious berry produced from the California dewberry
and the Cuthbert-raspberry; pieplants four feet in diameter, bearing
every day in the year; prunes, three, four, and five times as large
as the ordinary and enriched in flavor; blackberries without their
prickly thorns and hundreds of other combinations and crosses of fruits
and flowers too numerous to mention. He has improved plums, pears,
apples, apricots, quinces, peaches, cherries, grapes, in short, all
kinds of fruit which grow in our latitude and many even that have been
introduced. He has developed hundreds of varieties of flowers, improving
them in color, hardiness and yield. Thus he has not only added to the
food and manufacturing products of the world, but he has enriched the
aesthetic side in his beautiful flower creations.