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|3NoV57
Luther Burbank at Sixty-four
This direct color snapshot of Mr. Burbank was
made on his sixty-fourth birthday, March 7th, 1013. In
California, by an act of legislature, Mr. Burbank's birthday is a state
holiday, called "Burbank Day"— taking the place of Arbor Day
in other states. On Mr. Burbank's birthday the school
children of the State plant trees and celebrate
the occasion with appropriate exercises.
Luther Burbank
HIS METHODS AND DISCOVERIES AND
THEIR PRACTICAL APPLICATION
PREPARED FROM
HIS ORIGINAL FIELD NOTES
COVERING MORE THAN 100,000 EXPERIMENTS
MADE DURING FORTY YEARS DEVOTED
TO PLANT IMPROVEMENT
WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF
The Luther Burbank Society
AND ITS
ENTIRE MEMBERSHIP
UNDER THE EDITORIAL DIRECTION OF
John Whitson and Robert John
AND
Henry Smith Williams, M. D., LL. D.
Volume I
ILLUSTRATED WITH
105 DIRECT COLOR PHOTOGRAPH PRINTS PRODUCED BY A
NEW PROCESS DEVISED AND PERFECTED FOR
USE IN THESE VOLUMES
NEW YORK AND LONDON
LUTHER BURBANK PRESS
MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT 1914
BY
THE LUTHER BUP.CANK SOCIETY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Volume I — By Chapters
Foreword Page 3
I How the Cactus Got Its Spines —
And How It Lost Them
— A Sidelight on _
The Importance of Environment , »
II Twenty-three Potato Seeds —
And What They Taught
— A Glimpse at the „ ,.
Influence of Heredity OO
III No Two Living Things
Exactly Alike
— Infinite Ingenuity the Price f-n
of Variation 0 <
IV The Rivalry of Plants
To Please Us
— On the Forward March of -. . - —
Adaptation J-U /
V Let Us Now Produce a
New Pink Daisy
— A Practical Lesson in 1 ,1 1
Harnessing Heredity J- 41
VI Short-Cuts Into the
Centuries to Come
— Better Plants Secured by 111
Hurrying Evolution X i I
VII How Far Can Plant
Improvement Go ?
— The Crossroads Where Fact Oil
and Theory Seem to Part £1.1.
VIII Some Plants Which Are Begging
for Immediate Improvement
— A Rough Survey of O /f C
the Possibilities Z4t D
IX Piecing the Fragments of a
Motion Picture Film
— We Stop to Take OIZ,
A Backward Glance £ lO
List of Direct Color Photograph Prints 305
Foreword
Just as a stranger, going into a home for the
first time, will see, vividly, either beauties or
incongruities which constant association has
dimmed in the eyes of the steady occupants, just
so, a fresh mind may be better able to visualize
the more common processes, all too familiar to
me, which I employ in my daily work.
There are, in fact, many details in my routine
which are no less important because they are
common to me and which may need some little
explanation when described to others in different
walks of life.
I have, therefore, asked my associates, whose
new viewpoint should enable them to observe
these details in clear perspective, to present in
this — the first volume, a survey of the working
methods employed; so that the reader may in
the first few chapters be brought to the point
where he and I may go out into the fields
together, and work among our plants with perfect
understanding.
LUTHER BURBANK.
Santa Rosa, California
January 7, 1914.
Armored Against Its Enemies
The desert cactus shown in the accompanying direct color
photograph print portrays a typical arrangement of armor,
although many forms of cactus are more heavily spined even than
this. In addition to the laige bristling spines which fan out in
every direction, there are hidden behind each rosette a
bundle of undeveloped spines, numbering often as
high as ten thousand to each eye. When the
outward spines are cut off, these push
their way forward with surpris-
ing rapidity to protect the
gap in the armor.
How the Cactus Got Its Spines
—And How It Lost Them
A Sidelight on
The Importance of Environment
IT IS the acre-and-a-quarter patch of spineless
cactus on Luther Burbank's experiment farm
which first strikes the visitor's eye. In the
same yard there are 2500 other experiments under
way — new flowers, fruits, vegetables, trees and
plants of all descriptions such as man has never
before seen, but the velvet slabbed cactus — freed
from its thorns — seems more than a plant trans-
formation, it seems a miracle. Since the spineless
cactus represents the typical Burbank boldness
of conception, and reflects the typical Burbank
skillful execution, we may as well begin with it.
It occurred to Luther Burbank one day that
every plant growing on the desert was either
bitter, or poisonous, or spiny. It was this simple
observation which gave him the idea of this new
[Volume I — Chapter I]
UB*^
».c-sittt
LUTHER BURBANK
plant — a plant which already has shown its
ability to outdo alfalfa five to one, and which
promises to support our cattle on what have been
the waste places of the world; so that our
ranges may be turned into gardens to produce the
vegetable sustenance for a multiplying population.
Let us look at the life story of the cactus as
it unfolded itself to Luther Burbank when he
realized the importance of the simple fact that
desert plants are usually bitter, poisonous, or
spiny.
"Here are plants," thought he, "which have the
hardiness to live, and to thrive, and to perpetuate
themselves, under conditions in which other
plants would die in a day or a month.
"Here are plants which, although there may
be not a drop of rain for a year, two years, or even
ten, still contrive to get enough moisture out of
the deep soil and out of the air, to build up a
structure which, by weight, is ninety-two per cent,
water — plants which contrive to absorb from the
scorching desert, and to protect from the withering
sun, enough moisture to make them nearly as
juicy as watermelons.
"Here are plants which are veritable wells of
water, growing in a land where there are no
springs, or brooks — nor even clouds to encourage
the hope of a cooling rain; here are plants which
[8]
Every Inch Protected
Not only in the form of cactus shown here, but in
practically every form, the spines are so arranged as to protect
every inch of the surface. It will be seen that it would scarcely be
possible to touch a finger to the skin of the cactus plant above,
so completely does the armor protect it. This form of
cactus also gives an interesting illustration of the
fact that away back in its history, the plant,
instead of having flat slabs, had round
stalks. In this picture the three
joints of the round stalk
can be clearly seen.
LUTHER BURBANK
are rich in nutriment for man and for beast, here
in the desert where the demand for food is the
most acute — and the supply of it the most scanty.
"And here they are, ruined for every useful
purpose, by the bitterness which makes them
inedible, or the poison which sickens or kills, or
the spiny armor which places their store of nutri-
ment and moisture beyond reach.
"There must be some reason for that bitterness,
that poison, those spines.
"What other reason could there be than that
these are Nature's provisions for self defense?
"Here are the sagebrush, with a bitterness as
irritant, almost, as the sting of a bee, the euphorbia
as poisonous as a snake, the cactus as well
armored as a porcupine — and for the same reason
that bees have stings, that snakes have fangs,
that porcupines have arrow-like spines — for self
protection from some stronger enemy which seeks
to destroy."
*****
Self preservation comes before self sacrifice,
apparently, in plant life just as it does in human
life.
The plum trees in our orchards outdo each
other in bearing fruit to please us; the geraniums
in our dooryards compete to see which may give
us the greatest delight.
[10]
ON ENVIRONMENT
But may it not be because, for generations, we
have fostered them, and nurtured them, and cared
for them?
May it not be because we have made it easy for
them to live and to thrive?
May it not be because we have relieved them
of the responsibility of defense and reproduction,
that they have rewarded our kindly care by
fruiting and blooming, not for their own selfish
ends, but for us?
No man was ever kind to a cactus; no man ever
cultivated the sagebrush; no man ever cherished
the poisonous euphorbia.
Is it, then, to be wondered at that the primal
instinct of self preservation has prevailed — that
what might have been a food plant equal to the
plum transformed itself into a wild porcupine
among plants?
That what might have been as useful to the
horse as hay changed its nature and became bitter,
woody, inedible?
That what might have been a welcome friend
to the weary desert traveler grew up, instead, into
a poisonous enemy?
*****
"If the bitterness, the poison and the spines
are means of self defense," thought Mr. Burbank,
"then they must be means which have been
[11]
LUTHER BURBANK
acquired. The plants were here before there were
animals to feed on or destroy them, so there must
have been a time in their history when they had
no need for such defense.
"It must be true, then, that away back in their
ancestry there were desert sagebrushes which
were not bitter, desert euphorbias which were not
poisonous, and desert cactus plants which had
not even the suspicion of a spine. It could only
be the long continued danger of destruction
which could have produced so radical a means of
defense.
"We have, then, but to take these plants back
to a period in their history before defense had
become a problem — in order to produce an edible
sagebrush, a non-poisonous euphorbia, a spineless
cactus."
How, in a dozen years, Mr. Burbank carried the
cactus back ages in its ancestry, how he proved
beyond question by planting a thousand cactus
seeds that the spiny cactus descended from a
smooth slabbed line of forefathers — how he
brought forth a new race without the suspicion
of a spine, and with a velvet skin, and how he so
re-established these old characteristics that the
result was fixed and permanent — all of these
things will be explained in due course where the
discoveries involved and the working methods
[12]
A Relic of Past Ages
The color photograph print shown above is a six time
enlargement of a cactus seedling just after it has poked its head
above ground. It will be noticed that the root has already shown its
tendency to go deep in the ground and that this, together with the
spine-covered upright stalk or slab, reflects the characteristics of
immediate ancestry. The more interesting fact, however, and the fact
which proved to Mr. Burbank's mind his theory of the original
spinelessness of cactus, is to be found in the two smooth leaves
extending from the base of the small thorny slab. These leaves,
though rudimentary, and dropping off a few days after the cactus is
above the ground, are reminders of a former age when all cactus
plants had stalks or leaves that were as smooth as these.
LUTHER BURBANK
employed may be made applicable, as well, to the
improvement of other plants.
It suffices, here, to say that, beginning with his
simple observation and reading the history of the
cactus from its present-day appearance, he was
able to see outlined before him the method by
which a plant yielding rich food and forage has
been produced, which, more than any other plant,
promises to solve the present-day problem of
higher living costs.
*****
"But, Mr. Burbank," asked a visitor at the Santa
Rosa Experiment Farm, "do you mean that the
cactus foresaw the coming of an enemy which was
to destroy it? Is it believable that a plant, like
a nation expecting war, could armor itself in
advance of the necessity? And if the cactus did
not know that an enemy was later to destroy it,
would it not have been destroyed by the enemy
before it had the opportunity of preparing a means
of defense?"
Let us look into the history of the plant as it
revealed itself to Mr. Burbank and see the answer
to these questions.
*****
The likelihood is that parts of Nevada, Arizona,
Utah and Northern Mexico were once a great
inland sea — that the deserts now there were the
[14]
ON ENVIRONMENT
bed of that sea before it began its long process of
leakage or evaporation.
In these regions, so far as is known, the North
American cactus seems to have originated.
Back in the ages before the evaporation of the
inland sea was complete, the heat and the moisture
and the chemical constituents of the sandy soil
combined to give many plants an opportunity to
thrive. Among these was the cactus, which was
an entirely different plant in appearance from
the cactus of today, no doubt, with well defined
stalks and a multitude of leaves, each as broad as
a man's head.
As the heat, which had lifted away the inland
sea, began to parch its bottom, the cactus, with the
same tendency that is shown by every other plant
and every other living thing, began to adapt itself
to the changing conditions.
It gradually dropped its leaves in order to
prevent too rapid transpiration of the precious
life-supporting moisture. It sent its roots deeper
and deeper into the damp sub-stratum which the
sun had not yet reached. It thickened its stalks
into broad slabs. It lowered its main source of
life and sustenance far beneath the surface of the
ground and found it possible, thus, to persist and
to prosper.
Perhaps there were, in the making of the
[15]
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ON ENVIRONMENT
desert, other plants not so adaptable as the cactus,
plants which perished and of which man has no
knowledge or record.
And so, we may assume, the cactus and those
other plants which adapted themselves to the new
conditions crowded out those which were unable
to fit themselves to survive, and covered the drying
plains with their verdure.
But there came animals to the bed of this
one-time sea, attracted, perhaps, by the cactus and
its contemporaries, which offered them food of
satisfying flavor and easy access.
Of the plants which had survived the evapora-
tion of the sea and the heat of the broiling sun,
there were many, quite likely, which failed to
survive the new danger — the onslaught of the
animals.
Species by species the vegetation of the desert
was thinned out by the elements and by the
animals; and the animals, with plant life to
feed on, multiplied themselves in ever increasing
hordes, till perhaps the cactus was but one of a
dozen plants to survive.
Then came the fight of the cactus to outdo the
beasts which sought to devour it — the fight as a
family, and the fight within the family to see which
of its individuals should be found fit to persist.
Of a million cactus plants eaten to the ground
[17]
LUTHER BURBANK
by ravenously hungry antelopes, we will say —
antelopes which had increased in numbers year
by year while their food supply year by year was
relentlessly dwindling — of these million plants
gnawed down to the roots, perhaps but a thousand
or two had the stamina to throw out new leaves —
and to try over again.
But just as in its previous experience, the
cactus had changed the character of its stalk, so
now it undertook another change — the acquisition
of an armor.
This armor at first consisted of nothing but a
soft protuberance, a modified fruit bud or leaf,
perhaps, ineffectual in warding off the onslaughts
of the hungry animals.
So, of the thousand or two left out of the
million, there may have been but a hundred which
were able to ward off destruction.
The hundred, stronger than the rest, though
eaten to the ground, were able still to send up new
leaves, and with each new crop the hairs became
stiffer and longer, the protuberances harder and
more pointed, until finally, if there were even only
one surviving representative of the race, there was
developed a cactus which was effectually armored
against its every animal enemy.
One such surviving cactus, as transformed
throughout ages and ages of time, meeting new
[18]
As Smooth as Velvet
A direct color photograph print of four cactus leaves after Mr.
Burbank had taken the plant backward in its evolution to
spinelessness. Not only have the outward spines vanished, but all of
the thousands of rudimentary spines, bundled up inside, as well.
Contrasted with its parent varieties, it is not only possible to handle
spineless cactus with impunity, but it is so soft and velvety that
it can be safely rubbed over the face. Either in the form of
slabs, or cut into strips, or ground into meal, cattle
instinctively prefer cactus to any other food. The
elephants from a passing circus showed an
immediate liking for the new food and
vigorously trumpeted for more.
LUTHER BURBANK
conditions with changes so slight as to be almost
imperceptible, but gradually accommodating itself
to the conditions under which it lived and grew —
one such survivor out of all the billions of
cactus plants that have ever grown, would have
been sufficient to have covered the deserts of the
world with its progeny — to have produced all of
the thorny cactus which we have in the world
today.
*****
"You see," said Mr. Burbank, "the cactus did
not prepare in advance to meet an enemy — it
simply adapted itself to changing conditions as
those conditions arose. First, surviving the desert
drought and the broiling sun, it threw its roots
deep so that its main source of life was below
ground. Then, attacked by an enemy which ate
off the leaves above the surface, it still had life
and resistance to try again. Ineffectually, at first, it
began to build its armor, but each discouragement
proved but the incentive to another attempt. It
is a vivid picture: the whole cactus family in
a death struggle for supremacy over an enemy
which threatens its very life — millions and
millions of the family perishing in the struggle,
and perhaps but one victorious survivor left to
start a new and armored race.
"It is wonderful, too; but, whenever we plant a
[20]
ON ENVIRONMENT
cactus slab today we see evidences of adaptability
more wonderful than this.
"The slab of cactus is a brilliant green as we
put it in the ground. It is flat, of an oval shape,
an inch or less in thickness. Its internal structure
is of soft, mushy fiber, mostly water.
"As that slab sends down roots, it begins to
prepare itself to bear the burden of the other slabs
which are to grow above it.
"The thin, flat shape thickens out until it is
almost spherical; thus presenting a curved surface
in four directions instead of in two, it braces itself
against the winds which will play with the new
slabs far above it.
"Its mushy wood fibers grow tough and
resistant; it loses much of its watery character.
"It changes in color, from green to brown; it
loses its velvety skin and develops a bark like
that of a tree.
"Within a year after planting, this cactus
slab will have changed in appearance and in
characteristics to fit itself to the new conditions
which surround it.
"It will have changed its structure to bear
weight and stand strains. It will have modified its
internal mechanism to transmit moisture instead
of to store it. It will have remodeled its outer
skin to protect itself from the ground animals from
[21]
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ON ENVIRONMENT
which, when it wavS a slab high up on another
cactus plant, it knew and feared no danger!"
*****
Is it more wonderful that, unseen by us, a
plant should have adapted itself to the desert
and, through the ages, have armored itself against
an enemy, than that, before our eyes, in a single
year, it should meet changed conditions in an
equally effective way?
Is it more wonderful that it should grow spines
than that it should grow slabs which in turn have
the power to grow other slabs?
Is not the really wonderful thing the fact that
it grows at all?
*****
The cactus is one of the most plastic of plants —
educated up to this, perhaps, by the hardships
and battles through which its ancestry has fought
its way.
A slip cut from a rose bush, for example,
must be planted in carefully prepared ground of
a suitable kind, at a certain time of the year, with
regard to moisture and temperature — it must be
watched and cared for until it takes root and
begins for itself. Under continued cultivation, the
rose bush has lost some of its ability to make its
own way.
But the cactus, having come up from a line
[23]
/•s
4s*
LUTHER BURBANK
tV^ of warriors with every hand against it, needs no
^» such care. Every one of the fifty or more wart-like
&*• eyes on its every slab is competent to throw out
a root, a fruit, or another slab — whichever the
occasion seems to warrant.
Lay a cactus slab on hard ground, unscratched
by a hoe, and the eyes of its under side will throw
long yellow roots downward, while the eyes on
the upper side await their opportunity, once the
slab is rooted, to throw their other slabs and their
blossoms upward.
As the tiny buds grow from the eyes, it is
impossible by sight or microscopic examination to
determine which will be roots, which will be
fruits, or which will be other slabs. It is as though
the cactus, inured by hardship and prepared for
any emergency, waits until the very last possible
moment to settle upon the best-suited means of
reproduction — as though the bud, having started,
becomes a root if it finds encouragement for roots,
or a fruit if seed seems desirable, or an upward
slab if this can be supported.
Nor does its attempt at reproduction require
much encouragement. Fifty young cactus slabs
laid on a burlap-covered wooden shelf four feet
above ground were found to have thrown long
roots down through the burlap and through the
cracks of the boards within a few days.
[24]
After a Year in the Dark
The big cactus leaf shown here lay forgotten for one year, in
a dark closet in Mr. Burbank's old homestead. By accident, the
door of the closet was left open for a few days, allowed a faint light
to reach it, and the slab responded by throwing out a large but
sickly looking baby slab toward the light. During its year in
the dark, this slab of course had no moisture except what
was contained within itself and the only evidence of
its deprivation is shown by the fact that at the
bottom of the slab and in other spots the
fiber has begun to turn to wood.
LUTHER BURBANK
A cactus plant pulled from the ground and
tied by a string to the branch of a tree remained
hanging in the air for six years and eight months.
During this time it had no source of nourishment,
and its slabs withered and turned brown. But,
planted again by sticking one of its slabs six
inches in the ground, it immediately took root,
and within a few weeks began to throw out new
blossoms and slabs.
Another detached cactus slab, long forgotten
in a closet, and after having been in the dark
for more than a year, was found to have thrown
out a sickly looking baby slab when the closet
door was left open for a few days.
The more the adaptability of the present-
day cactus and its tenacious hold on life are
observed, the easier it becomes to understand
its fight against a devouring enemy which lived
during the desert-forming age, and to see the
origin of the thorny cactus of today.
* * * * *
Nor is the cactus the only desert plant which
shows evidences of such a struggle.
The goldenrods of the desert are more bitter
than the goldenrods of the plains.
The wormwood of the desert is more bitter
even than the wormwood which grows where there
have been fewer enemies.
[26]
A Typical Cactus Flower
However much the cactus offends by the
ugliness of its grim armor, it more than makes up by
the beauty of its flower. Most cactus flowers are large, delicate and
of brilliant color; ranging from perfect whites to deep
reds — from bright yellows to rich purples.
LUTHER BURBANK
The yuccas, the aloes, the euphorbias, all have
counterparts in their families which, needing less
protection, show less bitterness, less poison, fewer
spines.
And even rare cactus plants from protected
localities, and those of the less edible varieties,
give evidence, by the fewness of their spines, that
their family struggle has been less intense than
the struggle of the cactus which found itself
stranded in the bed of a former inland sea.
*****
Plants which have shown even greater adaptive
powers than the cactus are to be found in the well
known algae family.
One branch of this family furnishes an apt
illustration of the scant nourishment to which a
plant may adapt itself.
Microscopic in size, it lives its life on the upper
crust of the Arctic snow storing up enough energy
in the summer, when the sun's rays liquefy a thin
film of water on the icy surface, to sustain life in
a dormant stage during the northern winter's six
months of night.
With nothing but the moisture yielded from
the snow, and what nutriment it can gather from
the air, this plant, called the red snow plant,
multiplies and prospers to the extent that it covers
whole hillsides of snow like a blanket — covers
[28]
ON ENVIRONMENT
them so completely that the reddish color of the
plant, imparted to the snow, first gave rise to the
tales of far northern travelers as to the color of the
snowfall and explained the apparent phenomenon
of red snow.
Another division of this family, going to the
opposite extreme, thrives in the waters of Arrow-
head Sulphur Springs in California — lives its life
and reproduces itself in water so hot that eggs may
be easily cooked in it.
Contrasted with these microscopic members,
one thriving on the Arctic snows, the other in water
at the boiling point, there is still another member
of this family which has become the largest plant
in the world. This, the gigantic seaweed of the
Sargasso Sea, is taller and larger than the greatest
giant redwood which California has produced.
And so on; some of this family of the algae
grow on and in animals, some on other plants,
some on iron, some on dry rocks, some in fresh
water, and some in the salt seas.
The monkey-puzzle tree, a form of which is
illustrated by a direct color photograph print,
shows an adaptability to environment as striking
as that of the cactus — although for an entirely
different purpose.
At the top of the monkey-puzzle tree, so called,
[29]
The Monkey-Puzzle Tree
A striking example of spines for protection, this tree
bears but few seeds and protects them, with a spiny armor,
from destruction by monkeys. The nuts are borne at, or very near
the top, and the spines are so sharp that it is impossible for
any animal to climb the tree. Where the cactus
spines are designed to protect the plant itself,
the monkey-puzzle spines are designed to
protect the offspring of the plant,
represented by its seed.
V
f
ON ENVIRONMENT
are borne several nuts containing the seed of the
plant.
In the case of the cactus the thorns were thrown
out to protect the plant itself from destruction, but
in the case of the monkey-puzzle tree the animals
threatened not the tree itself but its offspring — its
nuts were so highly prized by the monkeys, and
their number was so few, that it was forced to take
protective measures to keep its seed out of the
reach of enemies.
From this we begin to see that each plant has
its own family individuality, its own family
personality. Some plants, in order to insure
reproduction, produce hundreds or thousands of
seeds, relying on the fact that in an over-supply
a few will likely be saved and germinated; while
other plants producing only a few seeds protect
them with hard shells or bitter coverings, or, as in
the case of the monkey-puzzle tree, with sharp
spines which make access impossible.
*****
In the deep canyons of California's mountains
there grows a member of the lily family, the
trillium.
At the bottom of these canyons there are places
where the sunshine strikes but one side. The
flowers on the shady side of the canyons are larger,
and the leaves of the plants are broader, and the
[31]
LUTHER BURBANK
bulbs are nearer the surface than those of the
plants which grow where the sun gets at them.
On the other side of the same canyons the
bulbs grow deep in the soil, and the leaves and the
blossoms transform themselves to protect their
moisture from the sun.
Which is all that the cactus did when the sea
was turned into a desert.
*****
Along the Pacific coast from Oregon well down
into California, there grows a common wild flower
of the pipewort family.
Inland a little way, say ten or fifteen miles, the
stalk of this plant is smooth and with hardly the
suspicion of a hair. But along the shore, where
the northwest winds pick up all of the finer
particles from the beach and form a sand blast,
the plant has developed a stalk so covered with
hairs that it is as woolly, almost, as a sheep —
perfectly protected against the sand-enemy.
Which is all that the cactus did when the
antelopes came to destroy it.
*****
Let the cactus, battle-scarred and inured to
hardship, teach us our first great lesson in plant
improvement:
That our plants are what they are because
of environment; that simply by observing their
[32]
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LUTHER BURBANK
structures, their tendencies, their habits, their indi-
vidual peculiarities, we can read their histories
back ages and ages before there were men and
animals — read it, almost, as an open book; that
our plants have lived their lives not by quiet
rote and rule, but in a turmoil of emergency;
and, just as they have always changed with their
surroundings, so now, day by day, they continue
to change to fit themselves to new environments;
and that we, to bring forth new characteristics in
them, to transform them to meet our ideals, have
but to surround them with new environments — not
at haphazard, but along the lines of our definite
desires.
— 7s not the really
wonderful thing
the fact that the
plants grow at all?
Twenty-Three Potato Seeds
and
What They Taught
A Glimpse at
the Influence of Heredity
THE springtime buds unfold into leaves
before our eyes — without our seeing them
unfold. We have grown accustomed to
look for bare limbs in March; to find them hidden
by heavy foliage in May; and because the process
is slow and tedious, and because it goes on always,
everywhere about us, we are apt to count it
commonplace.
Just as we can understand that the tree in our
yard, responding to its environment — to the April
showers, to the warm noons of May, to the heat
of summer and to the final chill of fall — has
completed a transformation in a year, so, too,
can we more easily understand the gradual trans-
formation of the cactus in an age. So, too, can
we realize that the individual steps between the
first ineffectual hairy protuberance, and the final
[Volume I — Chapter II]
LUTHER BURBANK
spiny armor, each a stronger attempt to respond
to environment, were so gradual as to be almost
imperceptible.
*****
But those rudimentary, half formed leaves
which come forth from every eye of the cactus
slab before the thorns or fruits come out — those
leaves which, as if seeing that they have no useful
purpose, as if realizing that they are relics,
only, of a bygone day, drop off and die — what
environment has acted to bring them forth?
And those two smooth slabs that push out when
the tiny seedling has just poked its thorny head
above the ground — to what environment do they
respond?
How shall we account for this tendency in a
plant to jump out of its own surroundings, and
out of the surroundings of its parents, and their
parents and those before them — and to respond
to the influences which surrounded an extinct
ancestor — to hark back to the days when the
desert was the moist bottom of an evaporating
sea and before the animals came to destroy?
* * w * *
A group of scientists were chatting with Luther
Burbank when a chance remark on heredity led
one of them to tell this bear story.
It seemed, so the story ran, that a baby bear
[36]
ON HEREDITY
had been picked up by miners within a few days
after its birth — before its eyes had opened. The
cub, in fact, was so small that it was carried
several miles to the camp tied in the sleeve of
the coat of one of the miners.
Raised to adult bearhood by these miners,
without ever having seen another bear — relieved of
the necessity of finding its own food and removed
from the wild environment of its ancestors — this
bear became as thoroughly domesticated, almost,
as a tabby cat.
What would such a bear do if thrown on its
own resources? Would it have to begin at the
beginning to learn bear-lore?
Bears are great salmon fishers, for example.
But is this skill taught by the mother to the
baby bear — or is it a part of every bear at birth?
That was the question of interest.
When the animal had arrived at maturity, it
was taken, one day, to a shallow salmon stream.
Here was a bear which had never fished for
salmon, and had never tasted fish; a bear which,
if bears have a language, had not received a
moment of instruction in self support; a bear
which, taken before its eyes were open, had never
seen its mother, had never known an influence
outside of the artificial atmosphere of the mining
camp.
[37]
LUTHER BURBANK
Brought to the salmon stream, however, there
was not an instant of delay; it glanced about,
located a natural point of vantage, straddled the
brook with its face down-stream, and bending
over, with upraised right paw, waited for the
salmon to come.
It did, unhesitatingly, just what any normal
wild-raised bear would have done.
With wonderful dexterity it was able to scoop
the onrushing salmon out of the stream and to
throw them in an even pile on the bank with a
single motion.
As other bears would do, this domesticated
bruin stood over the stream until it had accumu-
lated a considerable pile of the salmon on the
bank.
Going to this pile it quickly sorted over the
fish, making now two piles instead of one — with
all the male salmon in one pile, and all the female
salmon in the other.
Then, with its sharp claw, it proceeded to split
open the female salmon and to extract the roe,
which it ate with relish. This consumed, it
finished its meal on the other meat of the fish.
Untaught, it recognized salmon as food; dis-
tinguished males from females; knew the roe as
a delicacy. Unpracticed, it knew, instantly, just
how to fish for salmon and how to find the roe.
[38]
An Ancestral Secret
When the rapid growing eucalyptus tree pushes out its
leaves it discloses one of the secrets of its ancestry. Some of
the leaves, like those at the top of the branch pictured above, are
narrow and long. Others, lower down, are much broader. On a single
tree it is common to find five or six different kinds of leaves seeming,
when laid side by side, as though they must have come from separate
plants. The history of the eucalyptus, as disclosed by its leaves, its
quick growth, and other characteristics, is that one time it was an herb
— perhaps an annual. To fit themselves to some new environment, its
ancestors succeeded in establishing themselves as perennials. But this
change ivas so recent that the evidences of the transition are still
to be found in the leaves of all young eucalyptus trees today,
LUTHER BURBANK
"Right here on this experiment farm," spoke
up Mr. Burbank, "you might find hundreds of
evidences of heredity more striking than that —
more striking because they are the evidences of
heredity in plant life, instead of in animal life.
"Right here," said he, "you will find plants
which show tendencies unquestionably inherited
from a line of ancestry going back perhaps ten
thousand years or more — tendencies, some of
them, which now seem strangely out of place
because the conditions which gave rise to them
in their ancestors no longer exist; tendencies like
those of the cactus and the blackberry to protect
themselves from wild beasts when wild beasts are
no longer enemies; tendencies to deck themselves
in colors designed to attract the insects of a
forgotten age — insects which, perhaps, no man has
ever seen.
"Where some incredulity might be expressed
as to whether the bear had not actually been taught
to fish for salmon, or seen another bear perform
the act, there can be no such question in the case
of heredity in plants.
"Here," said he, as a bed of sweet peas was
approached, "is a plant which has inherited the
climbing, twining tendency.
"That is an evidence that, at some time
back in its history, this plant has probably been
[40]
ON HEREDITY
crowded for room. Plants which grow high do so
usually because, at some stage in their existence,
they have had to grow high to get the sun and the
air which they need. Low-lying plants, like the
pumpkin for example, give evidence that they have
always enjoyed plenty of space in which to spread
out.
"The bear of your story may^ have slipped
away, unknown to its keepers, and seen another
bear fish for salmon; but if these tendencies and
traits, and if the ability to perform the feats
necessary for existence are not passed down from
mother to son — if they do not come down through
the line of ancestry, if all of the old environments
of the past have not accumulated into trans-
missible heredity, what enables that sweet pea to
twine around the stake?"
*****
"A closer observation of the sweet pea will
show us that its tendrils are really modified leaves,
produced, like the spines of the cactus, by ages of
environment which, added up, combine to make
heredity; and that their actual sensitiveness to
touch is so highly developed that they almost
instantly encircle and hold fast to any suitable
support within their reach.
"It would be interesting to take a motion
picture of a sweet pea as it grows, as similar
[41]
Unblended Heredities
The two dahlias shown in this direct color photograph
print illustrate the freaks which heredity sometimes plays.
Sometimes, when two widely separated strains of heredity are brought
together in a single plant, or animal, the result is a blend; but
in these dahlias, as will be seen, some of the petals take
back to one line of ancestry while others take back,
equally distinctly, to another. No man can
predict the outcome when two separate
strains of heredity are mixed.
ON HEREDITY
motion pictures have been taken; making our
separate snapshots one every three minutes
instead of fifteen or sixteen to the second, so that
the reel would cover a period of fifteen days; then,
with a fifteen day history recorded on our film, to
run it through the projecting lantern at the rate
of fifteen or sixteen pictures to the second, thus
showing in seven or eight minutes the motions
of growth which actually took fifteen days to
accomplish; on the screen before us, with quick,
darting motions, we should see the sweet pea
wriggle and writhe and squirm — we should see it
wave its tendrils around in the air, feeling out
every inch within its reach for possible supports
on which to twine.
"We should see, by condensing half a month
of its life into an eight minute reel, that this sweet
pea has inherited an actual intelligence — slow in
its operation, but positive, certain — an inherited
intelligence which would be surprising, even, in
an animal."
*****
"All through plant life we find these undeniable
evidences of heredity.
"I have here, for example, two tiny seedlings
which look almost alike. They are distantly
related. One is the acacia and the other the
sensitive plant.
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LUTHER BURBANK
"Much as these plants look alike, they bear
witness to the fact that they have within them two
entirely different strains of heredity.
"The acacia will permit us to touch it and
handle it without showing signs of disturbance.
"But its cousin, in the same soil, and of the
same size, immediately folds up its leaves, in self
protection, at the slightest touch.
"From this we read the fact that one branch
of this family has found it necessary to perfect a
form of self defense, while the other has had no
such experience in its life history."
*****
"I have been much interested lately in an
experiment with common clover — in producing
clover leaves with wonderful markings.
"The only way in which I can account for the
markings with which some clover leaves will
bedeck themselves is that, in the heredity of the
plant, there was a time when, not being poisonous
itself, it tried to simulate the appearance of some
poisonous plant, to protect itself from insects.
"At first thought, it might require a stretch of
the imagination to understand how this could
be — yet a closer inquiry shows that the process
was as gradual and as surely progressive as the
transformation of the cactus.
"In clover, as in other plants, there has always
[46]
Simulating a Poisonous Look
The clover leaves shown above reveal a strange inherited
tendency. It is Mr. Burbank's belief that the white markings
and the black splotches, which can be readily distinguished, represent
an attempt on the part of the plant to simulate a poisonous look,
as a means of self protection. Although the tendency to
protect themselves with these warning streaks and
blotches of color is very strong, yet in all of
his experiments, Mr. Burbank has not
found a single clover plant which
was actually poisonous.
LUTHER BURBANK
been variation — some few individual clover plants
have always had the white and black markings.
"At some time in the history of the plant those
without the markings have been destroyed, and so,
responding to this new environment, the markings
became more and more pronounced until now we
have not only white triangular markings, but ugly
black splotches going clear through the leaf.
"From these markings we can read the history
of the clover — most of the family having plain
leaves inherited from an ancestry which found no
need to protect itself from an enemy — with an
occasional outcropping of poisonous-looking color
splotches — the inheritance of scattering environ-
ments in which self protection was necessary."
*****
"Or we might consider the ice-plant, so called,
which protects itself from the heat of the sun by
surrounding itself with tiny water drops which
have the appearance and serve the same purpose
as icicles; or the wild lettuce, known sometimes
as the compass plant, which turns its leaves north
and south so that only their edges are reached
by the sun; or any of a number of other strange
protective measures which plants have perfected —
all manifestations which would be impossible if
heredity were not an ever present, controlling
influence.
[48]
A Living Refrigerator
In this direct color photograph print it will be seen that
the stems and leaves are covered with formations which appear
to be tiny icicles. The plant is known as the ice plant, and the
icicles, in fact, are stored up moisture which it saves up against
the heat of the sun. The need for this extra moisture
is not apparent where this plant now grows, and
it is reasoned, therefore, that the plant
has been stranded, at some time or
another in its history, in some
unusually hot, dry climate.
LUTHER BURBANK
"We have, too, in many parts of the country
plants which have learned to snare and trap
insects and even animals, and to digest them and
to live on them.
"Among these carnivorous plants are the com-
mon pitcher plants, and the Venus fly trap.
"The pitcher plants, instead of belonging only
to one family, are to be found in a number of
different families, thus showing that environment
has produced a similar strain of heredity in
separate kinds of plants which are not kin to
each other.
"One of the pitcher plants which grows abun-
dantly in the moist places of the Sierras and in
northern California even catches frogs, small
animals and birds. The plant seems especially
devised to lure the animals into its pitcher. Above
the pitcher is a little lattice and an opening, like a
window, through which the light can shine. The
insects and the animals see a haven from the sun
and rain, and as they go in, there are little fingers
on the plant which push them along and keep
them from coming back.
"Once securely in the trap, the plant secretes a
digestive juice, like our own gastric juice, and
absorbs the animal life as food.
"In these traps it is common to find all kinds
of insects — including the undigested wings and
[50]
This Plant Eats Insects
The pitcher plant, shown here, which grows in the high
mountains of California, has perfected an ingenious contrivance
for catching and digesting insects. At the top of the pitcher, so called,
seen above, there is an opaque lattice work in the interstices of which
is a translucent, mica-like substance. The insect, entering from
beneath, in search of shelter, finds itself in a cosy chamber, well lined,
and weather proof. Once inside the chamber, however, it discovers
that it is being swallowed, irresistibly — and the plant finally deposits
it in the stomach below, where it digests it with a secretion akin to
hydrochloric acid. There are several other known carnivorous
plants, showing that at some time in their ancestry, the soil
has not given them sufficient nutriment for their needs.
LUTHER BURBANK
legs of beetles and grasshoppers and the bones of
toads and frogs.
"Is this not a more wonderful manifestation of
old environment, recorded within a plant in the
form of heredity, than even that of a bear which
seemed to have inherited the intelligence and skill
to fish?"
*****
"To my mind," said one of the scientists, "the
by-product of your work is fully as interesting as
the work itself — the viewpoint which you get on
the forces which control life is of even greater
attraction to me than the wonderful productions
which you have coaxed from the soil."
"A by-product, no," said Mr. Burbank; "these
things are a vital part of the day's work. Heredity
is more a factor in plant improvement than
hoes or rakes; a knowledge of the battle of the
tendencies within a plant is the very basis of all
plant improvement. It is not, as you seem to think,
that the work of plant improvement brings with
it, incidentally, a knowledge of those forces. It
is the knowledge of those forces, rather, which
makes plant improvement possible."
*****
"There are really, after all, only two main
influences which enter into the make-up of life —
only two influences which we need to direct, in
[52]
ON HEREDITY
order to change and control the characteristics of
any individual growing thing.
"The first of these is environment.
"The rains, the snows, the fogs, the droughts —
the heat, the cold — the winds, the change in
temperature between night and day — the soil, the
location in shade or sun — competition for food,
light, air — the neighbors, whether they be plant
neighbors, or animal neighbors, or human neigh-
bors— all of these, and a thousand other factors
which could be thought of, are the elements of
environment — some pulling the plant one way and
some another, but each with its definite, though
sometimes hardly noticeable, influence on the
individual plant.
"And the second is heredity:
"Which is the sum of all of the environments
of a complex ancestry — back to the beginning."
*****
"Just as with the bear, if the story be true, so
in plant life. In every seed that is produced there
are stored away the tendencies of centuries and
centuries of ancestry. The seed is but a bundle of
tendencies.
"When these tendencies have been nicely
balanced by a long continuation of unchanging
environment, the offspring is likely to resemble the
parent.
[53]
LUTHER BURBANK
"But when, through a change of environment,
that balance is disturbed, no man can predict the
outcome.
"So when a seed is planted, no man can be sure
whether the twentieth century tendencies will
predominate; or whether long-forgotten tendencies
may suddenly spring into prominence and carry
the plant back to a bygone age."
*****
"How can seeds store up the tendencies of their
ancestry?" some one asked Mr. Burbank.
"How can your mind store up the impressions
which it receives?" he asked in reply.
*****
Hidden away in the twists and turns of our own
brains, needing but the right conditions to call
them forth with vividness, there are hundreds of
thousands, perhaps millions of impressions which
have been registered there day by day.
The first childhood's scare on learning of the
presence of burglars in the house may make us
supersensitive to night noises in middle age.
The indelible recollection of a mother's love
and tenderness may arise, after forty years, to
choke down some harsh word which we are about
to utter.
The combined impressions of a thousand expe-
riences with other human beings seem to blend
[54]
ON HEREDITY
together to help us form our judgment of a single
human being with whom we are about to deal.
As the weeks have rolled into months, and as the
months have melted into years, new impressions
have arisen to crowd out the old; stronger impres-
sions have supplanted the weak, bigger impressions
have taken the place of lesser ones — but the old
impressions are always there — always blending
themselves into our judgments, our ambitions, our
desires, our ideals — always ready and waiting,
apparently, to single themselves out and appear
before us brilliantly whenever the proper com-
bination of conditions arises.
So, too, with the seed.
Every drought that has caused hardship to its
ancestors is recorded as a tendency in that seed.
Every favoring condition which has brought a
forbear to greater productiveness is there as a
tendency in that seed.
Every frost, every rain, every rise of the
morning sun has left its imprint in the line of
ancestry and helped to mold tendencies to be
passed from plant to plant.
Beneath the wooden looking, hard sheathed
covering of the seed, there is confined a bundle of
tendencies — an infinite bundle — and nothing more.
One tendency stronger than another perhaps —
a good tendency suppressing a bad tendency — or
[55]
LUTHER BURBANK
the other way; tendencies inherited from imme-
diate parents, tendencies coming down from wild
ancestry, tendencies originating from the influences
of twenty centuries or more ago — tendencies which
are latent, awaiting only the right combination
of conditions to bring them to life; all of the
tendencies of a complex ancestry — some lulled to
sleep, but none obliterated; that is a seed.
*****
"The whole life history of a plant," said Mr.
Burbank, "is stored away in its seeds.
"If we plant enough of the seeds, in enough
different environments, we are sure to have that
life history with all of its variations, all of its
hardships, all of its improvements and retrogres-
sions, uncovered before us."
*****
Which brings us to the boyhood lesson which
Luther Burbank learned.
*****
Thomas A. Edison spilled chemicals on the
floor of a baggage car — lost his job as train boy —
and made electricity his vocation instead of his
avocation.
Luther Burbank found a seed ball on one of
the plants of his mother's potato patch.
Who knows what little thing will change a
career? Or what accident will transform an ideal?
[56]
How the Carnation Insures Variation — /
This direct color photograph print, greatly enlarged,
shows that the carnation has perfected a device for insuring
variation equally ingenious as the geranium's. This photograph
shows the pistil, arising from the yellowish egg nest,
closed and unreceptive at the time that the pollen,
which may be seen on the two stamens at its
right, is ready for distribution.
How the Carnation Insures Variation — //
The pollen has now disappeared from the anthers and
the pistil spreads to receive pollen from a neighboring carnation.
The fuzzy, sticky surface of the receptive portion of
the pistil may be seen in this photograph.
How the Carnation Insures Variation — 111
This direct color photograph print shows the housing
of the carnation's egg nest cut away, and the individual eggs
closeted beneath the pistil awaiting fertilization
can be clearly distinguished.
LUTHER BURBANK
the combination between the two, instead of
between the pollen grains and the eggs of a single
blossom.
*****
Which is exactly what the Mother Geranium
intended we should do.
*****
If the stigma of a blossom were at its receptive
stage when the pollen packages around it burst
open, there would probably be combined in the
seeds of its egg chamber below, only the charac-
teristics of one parent plant — only the tendencies
of a single line of ancestry.
The geraniums growing from those seeds would
be so like in their tendencies of heredity that they
would differ, individually, only as their individual
environments differed.
But when those eggs have brought to them
the pollen from another plant, there are, confined
within them, the tendencies and characteristics of
two complex lines of ancestry; so that the plants
iDto which they grow will be encouraged into
variation and individuality, not as a result of
environment alone, but as a result of the countless
tendencies inherited from two separate lines of
parentage.
What a scheme for pitting the old tendencies of
heredity against the new tendencies of environ-
[76]
ON VARIATION
ment — what an infinite possibility of combinations
this opens up!
*****
Truly of a million geranium blossoms no two
could be exactly alike — nor any two of their five
million petals — nor any two of their ten million
stamens — nor any two of their hundred million
honey glands — nor any two of their billion pollen
granules !
*****
What we have seen in the geranium — those
seed-like eggs, the sticky stigma and that micro-
scopic pollen dust, we may see in some form or
other in every plant that grows.
The act which we might have performed to
produce a new geranium plant — the combination
of one of those seeds with some of that pollen —
is going on about us always, everywhere — with the
bees, and the butterflies, and the birds, and the
winds, and a score of other agencies acting to
effect those combinations.
Which is the reason for the candy factory at the
bottom of every geranium's little central well. And
for those brilliant petals, and that delicate scent,
and the picket arrangement of the stamen stalks,
and the crosswise poise of their pollen-bearing
anthers, and the central pistil stalk which rises
upward from the egg nest — and everything that is
[77]
LUTHER BURBANK
beautiful and lovely in the bloom of that geranium
— and the geranium itself.
*****
Here is a plant, the geranium, so anxious to
produce variations in its offspring that it has lost
the power of fertilizing its own eggs and risked
its whole posterity upon the cooperation of a
neighboring plant.
It has no power of locomotion — no ability to
get about from place to place in search of pollen
for its eggs or of eggs in need of its pollen; nor
has its neighbor; so they call in an outside
messenger of reproduction — the bee.
The geranium makes its honey at the bottom
of its blossom. It places movable packages of
pollen dust balanced on springy stamens in such
a way that, to reach the sweets, the pollen hedge
must be broken through. It keeps its egg chamber
closed and its pistil unreceptive while the pollen
dust is there, and as if to advertise its hidden
sweets to the nectar loving bees, it throws out
shapely petals of brilliant hue and exudes a
charming scent.
And thus, the bees, attracted from afar, crowd-
ing into the tiny wells to get their sweets, become
besmeared with pollen dust as they enter a pollen
bearing bloom — and leave a load of pollen dust
wherever they find a receptive stigma.
[78]
A Pollen Laden Bee
This direct color photograph print shows a bee, greatly
enlarged, which was captured in a cactus flower. The pollen
grains can be seen sticking to its hairy body, and the fact that, as it
crawls into the next flower, some of this pollen will find
lodgment on the sticky surface of a receptive stigma is
easily realized. The bees gather pollen not only for
distribution but for their own uses. The two
large splotches of pollen shown beneath
the second pair of legs are "pol-
len dough" which the bees
carry home for food.
LUTHER BURBANK
Where did the geranium get its color?
"From the bees," said Mr. Burbank.
Just as the cactus covered itself with spines
until it had built up an effective armor, in the same
way the geranium, by easy stages, has worked out
a color scheme to attract the bees upon which it
depends to effect its reproduction.
*****
In Mr. Burbank's yard there grows, as this is
written, a Chinese arum whose color and whose
scent reveal a different history.
Unlike most common flowers which advertise
to bees and birds and butterflies, this plant sends
its message to the flies.
Flies feed on carrion. The nectar of clover is
not to their liking and the brilliant colors of our
garden flowers fail to attract them. Our refuse
is their food, and they are guided to it by colors
and scents which are offensive to us.
So this Chinese carrion lily, as it has been
named — stranded at some time in its history,
perhaps, in some place where flies were its only
available messengers of reproduction, or blooming
at a period when other means were not within
its reach — has bedecked its spathe with a rich
and mottled purple — in color and in texture
resembling, from a distance, the color and
texture of a decaying piece of liver.
[80]
A Fly-Loving Flower
The Chinese carrion lily pictured here, advertises to the
flies to act as its messengers of pollenation. The spathe .
frequently grows to eighteen inches in length and, as can be seen,
though rich and really beautiful, is of the same color as a piece
of decaying liver. The smell emitted from this flower
is offensive in the extreme — all an advertisement
to the flies, which are carrion-loving insects.
LUTHER BURBANK
Just as the geranium supplements its advertise-
ment in color with an advertisement in scent, so,
too, the carrion lily has developed an individual
odor-appeal, decidedly like that of meat too long
exposed to the sun.
So obnoxious and so penetrating is the odor
of this flower that each year it has been found
necessary to cut down the plant shortly after it
has bloomed.
And so truly has it achieved its ideal that even
the buzzards, carrion birds that they are, attracted
by its color, its texture and its smell, have
descended in ever-narrowing circles — only to fly
away in disgust when they found they had been
lured by a flower.
* * * * *
Where the geranium finds it satisfactory merely
to block the entrance to its honey store with an
array of pollen bundles which must be pushed
aside by the entering insect, the Chinese carrion
lily makes doubly sure of pollenation by means
of a still more ingenious device.
The fry, attracted by the color of the spathe and
guided by the hidden odor at the base of the flower,
lights on the sturdy spadix and uses it as a ladder
for descent. The opening around the spadix is
just large enough to afford a comfortable passage
way; but once within the well, the spathe closes in
[82]
ON VARIATION
and snugly hugs the spadix, so that the fly, buzzing
about in the chamber below, becomes thoroughly
covered with the pollen dust.
This done, the flower slowly unfolds and
permits the pollen laden insect to escape.
*****
Many other flowers show equal or greater
ingenuity.
In some varieties of the sage, the pollen-bear-
ing stamens actually descend and quickly rub the
yellow dust on either side of the insect, after which
they fall back into their former position above the
nectar cells.
Most of the orchids, too, show an unusual
ingenuity.
One species bears its pollen in small bundles,
the base of each bundle being a sticky disc. The
structural arrangement of the flower is such that
the insect cannot secure its nectar without carrying
away at least one of the bundles. A pollen bundle
glues itself to the head of the insect and curves
upward like a horn.
As soon as the insect has withdrawn from the
flower, this pollen horn bends downward in front
of the insect, close to its head, so that when the
next flower is entered the dust can hardly fail to
reach a receptive portion of the pistil.
In this orchid there is but a single receptive
[83]
The Orchid Awaiting an Insect
Flowers are usually not only designed by their general
shape to attract insects, but their nectar store is often sur-
rounded by a target of some kind — sometimes of color only, and
sometimes as in the case of the orchid, a folded leaf which guides the
insect in. Almost all flowers, in this way, have centers which
are white, or more brilliant than, or different from the
rest of their color, as if to lead the insect to its
work with the least possible delay. The
orchid's pollen may be seen in this
photograph print directly in the
center of the flower.
The Orchid's Pollen Bundles
With the rest of the blossom torn away, the orchid's
pollen bundles and its sticky stigma may be seen in this
photograph print. These bundles attach themselves to the head of
the insect, sticking out like a horn so that the next flower visited will
be sure to receive its charge of pollen. The sticky stigma
can be seen in this print directly beneath the two pollen
bundles at the top. The petal itself of course
is bent down to show the structure, but it
can be seen that the colors and all
of the lines lead to the central
point as if to guide the bee.
LUTHER BURBANK
stigma and the pollen bundles are separate and
single, too; but in another orchid which has two
receptive stigmas, the pollen bundles are in doub-
lets, held together with a strap.
Thus the insect visiting this second orchid
carries away two pollen bundles on its forehead,
each so nicely placed that their dust will reach
both sticky stigmas of the next flower entered.
*****
Similarly, the pollen of the milkweed is stored
in two little bags, connected by a strap. When
the bee visits the flower its feet become entangled
in this strap and when it leaves it carries both bags
with it.
And so, throughout the whole range of plant
life, each fresh investigation would show a new
display of ingenuity — infinite ingenuity directed
toward the single end of combining the tendencies
of two lines of heredity — so that the offspring may
be different from and better than the parent.
We should see that there are those flowers
which bloom only in the night. Flowers which, as
if having tried to perfect a lure for the insects of
the day, and having failed, have reversed the order
of things and send forth blossoms of white or
yellow — luminous colors always — to attract the
moths that fly after the sun goes down.
We should find many interesting half hours
[86]
A Humming Bird Flower
The common nasturtium may be taken as a type of
flower which advertises to the birds rather than to the bees.
The honey is stored at the bottom of a long tube down which a
bee could hardly stretch its proboscis. In many other ways,
including the arrangement of the stamens and pistils,
bird flowers show their adaptation to the partner-
ship which their ancestors have built up.
LUTHER BURBANK
of wonder contemplating such flowers as the
honeysuckle, the nasturtium and many of the
lilies — which have taken special precaution to
place their nectar in long, horn-like tubes, out of
the reach of insects, so that only the birds may
become their messengers of reproduction.
We should see the pathos of those flowers
which advertise for insects that rarely come. The
barberry, for example, which can be pollenated
only during the bright hours of a cloudless day,
and during a time so short that there is little
chance of pollen being brought by insects from
other blossoms. Each barberry blossom, ready
for the insect if it should come, but as if expecting
disappointment, makes sure of self perpetuation,
if not of self improvement, by jabbing its pollen
laden anthers on its own stigma with a motion as
positive and as accurate as the jump of a cat.
Or the fennel flower of France, in which the
several pistils bend over and take pollen from the
stamens around them and straighten up again.
Or the flowers of the nettle, in which the
stamens increase their height with a sudden
spring-like action, showering the pollen up over
the receptive stigma.
We should observe that wheat and some of the
other grains, as though discouraged by centuries
and centuries of failure to secure variation, had
[88]
ON VARIATION
settled down to the steady task of reproducing
their kind exactly as it is, depending only on
individual environment for individuality, and
ensuring reproduction by self pollenation.
We should see plants in all stages of their
attempts to keep their kind on the upward trend;
we should see a range of ingenuity so great that
no man, no matter how many of his days have
been devoted to the study of plants and their ways,
can ever become dulled to its wonders.
*****
"I bought some extremely expensive seed corn
several years back," complained a Santa Rosa
farmer. "But, just as I expected, it ran down.
The first year's corn was fine, and so was the
second; but now it has gone clear back to ordinary
corn. This plant improvement doesn't pay."
"Do you know how corn reproduces itself?"
asked Mr. Burbank.
"Do you realize that if you plant good corn on
one side of a fence, and inferior corn on the other,
the corn cannot see the fence?
"Would you expect that a cross between a race
horse and some family dobbin would produce a
line of racers?
"Separate your good corn from your poor,
and keep it by itself, and you will find that it does
not run down, but even gradually improves."
[89]
LUTHER BURBANK
Every farmer knows that corn must be planted
in large quantities close together — that a single
kernel of corn, planted in one corner of a lot,
apart from other growing corn, would be non-
productive.
Yet how many of those who depend upon corn
for their living fully realize the reason for this?
The geranium, with its nectar, its scent, its
color and its structural arrangement, has built
up a partnership with the bee to perform its
pollenation.
While corn, with no advertisement, no honey,
no brilliant reds, no scent, has developed an
equally effective plan of making the breezes act
as its messenger of reproduction.
*****
Here is a plant, tall and supple, that responds
with graceful movements to the slightest breath of
air. At its top it holds a bunch of pollen laden
tassels — swaying tassels which, with each back-
ward and forward movement, discharge their tiny
pollen grains in clouds, which slowly settle to the
ground.
Below, on the stalk of the plant, are the ears of
corn, containing row after row of the egg kernels,
needing but combination with pollen from above
to become, each, a seed capable of starting another
corn plant on its life.
[90]
An Experiment in Corn
The ear of corn shown at the left is one which, on an
ordinary corn plant, was allowed to take its course. The
whlnrZ °ne„which w™. ^vered with a paper bag at the time
Vt 1 ,4 Pf fn WaS flying- The ^ands of silk thus being
protected from pollen, the kernels beneath did not
mature. It will be seen from this that the breezes
are as necessary to the corn plant as the
bees and birds are to the flowers.
LUTHER BURBANK
Just as the eggs of the geranium were housed in
a protective covering, so, too, the corn eggs are
sheathed in protective husks. And just as a tiny
stalk protruded from the egg chamber of the
geranium, so, too, does the silk which protrudes
from the end of the husk serve the same purpose
for the corn seed.
Tear the husks from an ear of corn, and it will
be seen that each strand of the protruding silk
goes back to an individual kernel on the ear.
That, between the rows of kernels, like electric
wires in a conduit, each strand of the common
bundle of silk protruding leads back to its separate
starting place.
To combine the characters of two parent corn
plants, all that is necessary is to dust the pollen
from the tassel, of one on the silken ducts of the
ear of another.
And the breezes, as the3r swish a waving field
of corn gracefully to and fro — as they play through
a forest of pines, or as they ripple the grasses of
our lawns — are performing their function in the
scheme of reproduction as effectively as the bee
does when it goes from geranium to geranium
in search of sweets.
*****
Consider the simple salt-water cell, as seen
reproducing itself under the microscope merely
[92]
ON VARIATION
by splitting in two; and those two each becoming
two, and so on endlessly.
Observe that, with only a single line of
parentage from which to draw tendencies, the
individualities to be found in this, the lowest form
of life we know, are molded wholly by the differ-
ence in the saltiness of the water, or the variation
in its temperature, or those other limited changes
within a short-lived environment.
And then consider the geranium, and the
Chinese arum, and the orchid, and the corn — with
a thousand added complications in their lives
brought about by a single dominant purpose — a
thousand self-imposed difficulties and obstacles
which would be needless except for that guiding
desire to give the offspring a better chance than
the parent had!
What a price to pay for variation! What
ingenuity and effort each new combination of
heredities has cost! How many must have been
the plants which advertised for insects that did
not come! How many, finding themselves in an
unequal struggle, have perished in the attempt!
*****
Truly, if the cost of things may be taken
as a measure of their value, how much must this
dearly bought variation be worth in the Scheme
of Things!
[93]
LUTHER BURBANK
"The struggle of a plant to secure variation in
its offspring does not end with the seed," said Mr.
Burbank. "It only begins there."
*****
In the tropics, a common tree near the seashore
is the coconut palm. The coconuts which we
find in our market, their hard shells outermost,
are but the inside portion of the nuts as they grew
on these trees.
When they were gathered, there was a fibrous
substance surrounding the shell an inch or two
in thickness — a woody fiber torn off by the
shippers to cut down the cost of freight and
cartage. Around this excelsior-like covering, as
the nut grew on the tree, there was a skin-tight,
waterproof cover, with a smooth or even shiny
surface.
At the top of the nut as it would stand if it
floated in water, are three well defined eyes.
Since these coconut palms grow, usually, along
the water's edge, the nuts often roll into a brook,
or a river, or the ocean, and float away.
Once detached from the tree and started on
such a journey, the eyes disclose their purpose.
Two of them begin to throw out a system of roots,
not on the outside of the coconut, but growing at
first within the woody fiber between the shell and
the outside skin.
[94]
The Coconut's Three Eyes
As this coconut falls in the water, one of the eyes shown
at the top throws up a sail-like leaf while the other two begin to
throw out a mass of roots within the excelsior-like covering, but inside
of the waterproof cover of the nut, which for the purpose of illus-
tration, has been removed. When the sail has carried the
nut to a new environment, the roots burst forth and
the sail grows into a taller stalk, which finally
becomes the trunk of the new palm.
LUTHER BURBANK
At the same time the other eye pushes out sail-
like leaves extending several inches above the
outer casing.
Then, with sails set, and aided by the current
of the stream, the nut starts out on its journey to
find an environment of its own.
Once landed, after weeks, perhaps, of travel,
the roots which have been growing inside force
their way out into the moist soil at the water's
edge — the sail leaves begin to grow into stalks,
which later develop into the trunk of the tree,
the waves start to build new ground by washing
sand around it, and the first page in the history
of a new palm in a new environment is written.
*****
The hard shell surrounding the stored-up milk
in the coconut is there, obviously, as a protec-
tion from the monkeys; to prevent extermination
through their liking for the milk.
And that excelsior packing, and that water-
proof housing, are these not as plainly the
palm's attempt to provide for its baby tree a new
environment?
*****
We do not have to go to the tropics for
evidences like these.
There is probably no more familiar weed in
our vacant lots than the common dandelion.
[96]
ON VARIATION
Who can forget its feathery seed ball waiting,
when ripe, for the first youngster, or the first draft
of air to blow it away on its long sail through the
air as it distributes its seeds — some on stones,
perhaps, and some on plowed ground — such a
multitude of seeds that, though many be lost, some
will find themselves throwing roots into new soil,
rearing their heads into new air — starting life in
a new environment?
*****
Or we might learn a lesson from one of the
wild chicories which provides some of its seeds
with wings to fly, while others it leaves wingless.
Those seeds without wings fall at the feet of the
parent plant as if to keep green the old family
home; while those with wings fly away to start new
families, under new conditions, where latent traits
and tendencies — latent elements of weakness or
strength — may cooperate to produce a better
chicory.
Or from that joy of childhood, the squirting
cucumber, which, when ripe, fires its seeds, mixed
up in its milky contents, with such force that they
are sometimes carried a distance of twelve to
fifteen feet.
Or even the sweet pea, or our garden pea, which
when their seeds have dried, have the ability to
throw them some distance from the parent plant.
[97]
LUTHER BURBANK
In Mexico, there is the familiar jumping bean
tree, which calls in an insect to aid in the distribu-
tion of its seeds.
While these beans are still green, they are
visited by a moth which lays her eggs in them.
As they ripen, the grub hatches out and lives upon
the food stored within.
As if in partnership with the moth, the jumping
bean tree has provided food for her offspring, so
that the larva has plenty to eat without injuring
the seed within the bean.
And the grub, as it hollows out the bean and
jumps about within it, causes it to turn and roll —
rolls it into a new environment — repays its family
debt to the tree which gave it food.
* * * * *
In the wooded mountains near Santa Rosa
there grows a pine tree which has worked out an
ingenious scheme for taking advantage of occa-
sional forest fires to aid it in its reproduction.
Most other trees mature their nuts or seeds and
shed them every season. The animals may eat the
fruit and carry the seeds afar, or take the nuts to
new environments, or the seedlings may come up
at the foot of the parent tree — but the process of
seed bearing and seed shedding usually completes
its cycle every fall.
The pine tree referred to, however, does not
[98]
ON VARIATION
shed its seeds in this way, nor is there any
inducement in them or their covering to tempt an
animal to carry them away.
They grow in clusters about the trunk and
branches, but remain attached to the tree. The
cones which hold them do not even open. Some-
times nine or ten crops of these seed cones may
be observed clinging to a parent tree.
But whenever. the woods are visited by a forest
fire, the cones are dried out by the heat, and the
seeds, released, fall to the ground and sprout.
In the localities in which these trees grow, there
would be little chance for their seeds to germinate,
in fact, except after a forest fire had cleared the
ground.
Against the competition of all of the hardy
underbrush to be found in those localities, the
mother tree, it would seem, fears that her seeds
will have but a poor chance.
Yet when the fires have cleared the ground and
killed almost every other living thing, these seeds
spring up almost as quickly and almost as thickly
as grass on a lawn; and, competition removed,
they grow with surprising rapidity into the
making of a new forest.
It has been observed that these trees grow
usually along the sides of deep canyons where the
destructiveness of the fire is the greatest — and only
[99]
LUTHER BURBANK
in canyons where forest fires are frequent — show-
ing that without the aid of the fires, the tree can
not perpetuate itself.
So firmly fixed has this partnership between
the fires and this particular pine tree become that,
its seeds, if planted under other conditions, will
not germinate.
Taken from the tree, it is impossible to get
them to grow even with the greatest care in good
soil; but experiment has shown that, if placed for
a few hours in boiling water, they will readily
sprout even in poor soil.
Thus, as if through a strange alliance, the
forest fires clear the ground, scatter the cones and
prepare the seed of this pine tree for germination;
and the pine tree, in turn, rebuilds the forest
which the fires destroyed.
*****
The devil's claw, a tropical relative of our
unicorn plant, has developed the power to bite
and to hold on with almost bulldog grip, in its
scheme of providing new environments for its
young.
This plant, growing low on the ground among
other tropical vegetation where the distribution of
seed becomes a problem, grows a seed pod of
seven inches or more in length.
Its seed pod, while maturing, is encased in a
[100]
The Devils Claw— I
As it grows in the tropics, the need pod of the
devil's claw, or martynia, shown above, resembles a large
gourd in color and in texture of its covering. The succeeding
prints show how it transforms itself to bite and hold
on to passing animals with a bull dog grip.
LUTHER BURBANK
pulpy covering with a thick green skin, and its
bulb and hook suggest some kind of gourd.
When the seeds within are mature, the outside
covering splits and peels away, disclosing a seed
nest which is armored with spines more thickly
than a prickly pear. That which, during its early
stages, formed the hook, now spreads into two
branches with pointed ends sharper than pins,
almost as sharp as needles.
Between these four-inch hooks, where they join
the spiny bulb behind them, there appears a hole
from which the seeds, if loosened from their
former pulpy support, may, by pounding and
thumping, find their way out into the world.
As the seed pod lies on the ground, its sharp
hooks coiled in exactly the right position, it awaits
a passing animal. This spring trap may remain
set for many months, but once an animal, big or
small, steps between those fish-hook points, their
mission is accomplished. The first slight kick or
struggle to get away imbeds them deeply, and at
each succeeding struggle the hooks bite in, and in,
and in, until finally the animal, in its efforts for
release, pulls the seed pod from the plant and
starts to run.
Swinging to a leg or tail, suspended by the two
sharp points of its prongs, the spiny housing of
the seed pod comes now into play. At each bound
[102]
The Devil's Claw— 11
In this print it will be seen that the gourd-like
covering is being shed, and that what at first seemed to
be but a single stem has separated into two wiry prongs. This
seed pod is attached to the plant by a stem which joins
it at the bottom of the picture shown above.
The Devil's Claw— 111
Having completely shed its gourd-like covering, and with
its jaws set for a passing animal, it will be seen that the pod
itself is covered with prickly spines. When the fish-hook points of
the prongs bite into the leg of an animal, the whole contrivance becomes
balanced from that point, and at each jolt and jounce the heavier body
of the pod pounds down upon the leg, its spines causing great
pain. There is an opening between the two prongs at the
upper end of the pod itself from which the seeds
come out at every bounce. When these are
scattered over a mile or two of new
environment, the pod falls apart.
ON VARIATION
or jump, the pod flops up and down, and its prickly
points, adding to the pain of the ever-pinching
hooks, are sure to keep the animal in motion. As
the frightened beast makes haste to get away from
an enemy which it cannot see, the seeds within the
pod begin to loosen and fall out on the ground.
When the last seed has left its shelter, the trap
begins to fall apart — its object accomplished — its
seeds scattered throughout a mile or more of new
environment.
* * * * *
The sailor is awed by the mountains, and the
mountaineer is awed by the sea.
And we, too, are more apt to wonder at the
jumping beans of Mexico and at the devil's claw of
the equator than at the cherry tree in our own
back yard — which outdoes both of these by form-
ing a double partnership.
Just as the geranium bids for the bees, so the
cherry blossom, with its delicate pink and its store
of honey advertises for butterflies and bees to
bring the pollen from a neighboring tree.
And this partnership concluded, the accounts
balanced and the books closed, it then seeks new
partners in the birds.
That delicious meat around the seed, that shiny
skin of red, and that odor of the cherry as it ripens
— these are a part of the advertisement to the
[105]
LUTHER BURBANK
birds or animals — a lure to get them to eat the
fruit and carry the seed as far as they may to
another— a new — environment.
Shall we wonder at the jumping bean and the
devil's claw when our own cherry tree is getting
the bees to give its offspring new heredities and
the birds to surround these heredities with new
environments in which to grow?
*****
Wherever we look we see a new display of
ingenuity — all for the sake of variation — variation
which may mean retrogression as well as advance-
ment— but such infinite variation that, surely,
there can be found one out of a thousand, or one
out of ten thousand, or one out of a million better
than those that went before.
Every flower that delights our eye, and every
fruit which pleases our palate, and every plant
which yields us a useful substance, is as delightful
as it is, or as pleasing or as useful as it is, simply
because of the improvement which has been made
possible through variation.
— No two living things
are exactly alike.
The Rivalry of Plants
to Please Us
On the Forward March
of Adaptation
WE cut down our alfalfa four or five
times a season," says some one, "why
doesn't it grow spines to protect itself?
We destroy our lettuce before it goes to seed;
why doesn't it develop a protective bitterness like
the sagebrush?
"We rob our apple trees of all their fruit the
moment they are ripe; why do they not become
poisonous like the desert euphorbias?"
*****
"Let us go back to the cactus," says Mr. Bur-
bank, "and read the answer.
"Grim and threatening though the cactus seems,
it is not without its softer side; in the springtime
its blossoms, a multitude of them, push their way
through the spiny armor — and rival the rose in
formation, compete with the orchid in the delicacy
of their hues.
[Volume I — Chapter IV]
LUTHER BURBANK
"No favorite garden flower can outdo this
ungainly monster of the desert, when in hloom,
in the seductiveness of its advertisement to the
bee.
"When summer comes, and the bee has paid,
by the service it has rendered, for the honey it has
taken, the nest of fertile eggs beneath each cactus
blossom begins to grow into a luscious fruit.
"In this cactus fruit there is an acid sweetness
as tempting as that of the raspberry, the straw-
berry or the pineapple. Its outward covering has
a brilliant beauty no less attractive than that of
the cherry, or the grape.
"Thus, in the springtime, the cactus, like the
cherry, advertises to the friendly bees to bring
its offspring new heredities, and, in the fall, it
advertises to the friendly birds to carry off its
seed and plant it where its young may have the
advantage of new environments.
"In its spiny armor we read the plant's response
to the enemies in its environment.
"In its brilliant flowers and tempting fruit we
read its receptiveness to the friendship of the birds
and bees.
"Those spines and those flowers and fruits tell
us that while its ancestors were fighting a common
foe, they still found time to build up lasting
partnerships.
[108]
ON ADAPTATION
"And so, with every plant that grows, we shall
see these same tendencies — instincts shall we call
them? — to ward off the enemy and make use of
the friend."
*****
"So long as plants grow wild, the frosts, the
winds, the hail storms, the droughts and the
animals are principal among the enemies with
which they have to reckon.
"So long as they grow in the woods, or on the
mountains, or in the deserts, the bees and the birds
and the butterflies — the warmth of the sun and
moisture of the soil — these are among the friendly
factors in their lives.
"But when we take plants under cultivation, we
upset their whole environment.
"We build fences around our blackberries so
that they need no thorns. We save the seeds of our
radishes, and the bulbs of our lilies, and through
human organization distribute them and plant
them wherever they will grow. We cut slips from
our apple trees and ship them from county to
county, and state to state, and nation to nation, and
zone to zone. We select, and improve, and plow,
and harrow the ground for our plants; we water
them when they are dry; we surround them with
shade trees if they need shade, we cut down the
shade trees if they prefer the sun; we plant their
[109]
LUTHER BURBANK
baby seedlings under glass, and give them every
favoring condition in which to mature; we remove
what for ages have been the chief problems of
their lives — we take over their two prime burdens,
the burdens of self defense and reproduction.
"The frosts, and the winds, and the hail storms,
and the droughts, and the animals are no longer
the chief enemies of plants; for man, when he
comes into their environment, is more dreadful
than all of these combined — if he chooses to
destroy.
"And the bees and the birds and the butterflies,
and the warmth of the sun, and the moisture in the
soil, fade into insignificance as friendly influences
when compared with that of man— if it pleases
him to be a friend.
"So the geranium still advertises to the bees,
and the cherry tree to the butterflies and birds, as
of old.
"But their main advertisement, now, is an
advertisement to us; their strongest effort, now
that we have become predominant in their lives, is
to lure us with their blossoms and their fruit — to
enchant us with their odors, and colors, and
lusciousness, as they formerly enchanted only
the bees — to win and hold our appreciation and
affection, and merit our kindly attention and
care."
[110]
ON ADAPTATION
Our alfalfa, lettuce and apples, like our horses,
our cows, our dogs, have found in man a friend
stronger than the strongest of their enemies.
So their welfare now is measured by the
usefulness of the service they can render in repay-
ment for man's care.
*****
"There is a common snowball in my yard,"
continued Mr. Burbank, "which advertises alone
to me.
"In the woods around there are other snowballs
of the same family — wild snowballs — into whose
life history man, as a part of environment, has
never come.
"The wild snowball, with only a fringe of
blossoms, and a mass of egg nests and pollen inside
the fringe, is still advertising to the bee.
"But the snowball in my yard has responded
to my care, and to the care of those who went
before me, till its stamens and pistils, as if seeing
their needlessness, have turned to blossoms — till
its eggs have grown sterile, even should an insect
come.
"And so, with every snowball which grows in
anybody's yard — cultivation has relieved it of the
need for reproduction, and what was once but a
fringe of flowers has been transformed into a
solid mass of blossoms.
[Ill]
The Snowball, Tame and Wild
The upper snowball is the one which grew in Mr.
Burbank's yard, or such as commonly grows under cultivation.
The snowball below is a wild one such as grows in the woods. The
wild snowball, it will be seen, uses the flowers to attract
messengers of pollenation to the reproductive mechanism
which the flowers encircle. The upper snowball,
however, has lost its power of reproduc-
tion by seed and advertises to us,
instead, to perpetuate its race.
ON ADAPTATION
"Just as a mother cat can make a dumb appeal
for the protection or the sustenance of her kittens,
an appeal no human being can misunderstand,
just as strongly and just as clearly do the
snowballs, by the beauty and helplessness of their
self-sterilized flowers, appeal to us to see to their
protection and effect the perpetuation of their
kind."
*****
Many violets, as they grow wild in the woods,
bear two kinds of blossoms.
One is the flower, rich in color and in scent,
which is borne at the top of the plant.
The other, an egg nest without odor, or beauty,
or other advertisement — which is borne near the
base of the plant.
The flower at the top, like the flower of a
geranium, advertises to the insects to bring pollen
from other plants.
The colorless flower at the bottom needs no
insect to bring it pollen — it pollenates itself and
produces fertile eggs with only a single strain of
heredity.
Some of these violets with upper and lower
blossoms, particularly those which grow in the
shade, never open their upper flowers — as if
knowing that the friendly insects so prefer the sun
that no attempt at advertisement could lure them
[113]
LUTHER BURBANK
to the shade. These violets reproduce themselves
wholly by the self-fertilization which goes on
within the colorless flower below.
And there are those violets, of this same kind,
blooming in the sunlight, which open their upper
flowers, so that, if visited by insects, the seed
within matures; but, as if in doubt of the effective-
ness of their advertisement, the lower blossoms
continue to produce their inbred seed.
And there are still other violets which, as if
assured of the friendship of the insects, have
ceased to make the colorless blossoms below, and
produce their entire output of seed at the base of
the brilliant upper flower.
Here, in these three kinds of violets, is written
the story of a plant's struggle with wild environ-
ment in which man has not yet become a factor;
the story of an unequal struggle in which the
stages of failure, partial victory, and complete
triumph are clearly laid before us.
*****
Into the life of the violet, some few hundred
years ago, there came the new element of environ-
ment— man.
A single violet plant which was taken from its
catch-as-catch-can existence, let us say, found
itself in fine-combed soil in the shade of some
one's dooryard.
[114]
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LUTHER BURBANK
If it rained too much, drainage took up the
excess. When the rains did not come, the soil
was sprinkled.
Under cultivation, and kindly care, the discour-
agements of its life grew less and less, and the
encouragements to thrive grew more and more.
Soon this violet, as if assured of reproduction,
abandoned the blossoms at its base, and threw its
energies into making bigger and brighter and
more beautiful blossoms at its top. Where it had
half-heartedly advertised to the bees of old, it now-
concentrated its efforts to win the approval of the
new-found friend whose dooryard brought it
opportunity.
And this is the life story of that kind of violet
which we now call the pansy.
On the one hand, in the woods, we see its wild
kin-folk still struggling against unequal odds; on
the other we see its own large, beautiful pansy
petals, and the increased brilliancy of its hues;
each a response to environment.
Truly, in the pretty face of the pansy, we may
read the vivid story of man's importance as a
friendly element in the lives of plants.
*****
Where do the flowers get their colors?
"From the bees," said Mr. Burbank. "And from
us."
[116]
The Violet's Wonderful Advertisement
With both wondrous color and charming scent, some
violets advertise to the insects which, because of the flower's
preference for moist shady places, rarely come. Wild, in the woods, are
to be found violets which bear only colorless flowers as shown
in the preceding print, as well as some which bear both
kinds of flowers, and still others which, as if having
succeeded in attracting the insects, bear
only the delicate blossoms shown here.
A Response to Kindly Care
Taken from its wild environment and freed from its
struggle, the violet became a pansy. Truly, in the pretty face of
the pansy, we may read the vivid story of man's impor-
tance as a friendly element in the lives of plants.
ON ADAPTATION
On the experiment farm at Santa Rosa, there
grow two ordinary looking pear trees which
amplify the thought.
One of these trees produces large, juicy, soft,
aromatic, luscious, easily digested pears — a delight
to the eye and to the palate.
The other produces small, hard, bitter, indi-
gestible fruit, the very opposite in every way of
our idea of what a pear should be.
Looking at these trees side by side, it would be
difficult to realize that their fruit could be so differ-
ent. Both show the unmistakable characteristics
of the pear tree — the pear tree shape, the pear tree
branches, the pear tree leaves, the pear tree blos-
soms. In their fruit alone do they differ.
*****
Since these two pear trees illustrate an impor-
tant point, let us begin at the beginning:
The pear, it seems, was first discovered in
eastern Europe or western Asia. It was there, in
Eurasia, some two thousand years ago, that man
first realized that this fruit was good to eat.
Coming to us, thus, out of obscurity, the pear,
during these twenty centuries, has spread to the
east, and to the west, till it has completely encircled
the globe — a slow process, but one which takes
place in every desirable fruit which is discovered
or produced.
[119]
LUTHER BURBANK
As Europe became more and more settled, the
pear kept pace with the invaders. It followed them
to the British Isles, it followed them across the
Atlantic to America. It followed them westward
across this continent as the pioneers pushed their
way to the Pacific.
In the same way it worked its eastward journey
through Siberia, and China, and Japan — more
slowly, perhaps, than under the influence of
European and American hurry and enterprise, but
just as constantly, and just as surely — till now, in
friendly climates, it is a world-wide fruit.
*****
Both of the pear trees described here, as in fact
all of the pear trees which we know today, seem to
have come from those common parents in eastern
Europe or western Asia.
The one in Mr. Burbank's yard which bears the
luscious fruit is the Bartlett pear — an excellent
though common variety in the United States.
The other, with its bitter, indigestible fruit, is
one which was imported from Japan.
*****
The lesson which these two pear trees teach is
that fruits, like flowers, in their rivalry to please
us, adapt themselves to the tastes, desires, and
ideals of the human neighbors among whom they
grow.
[1201
A Chinese Lily
The unusual shape of this flower, beautiful though it is,
shows how even flowers respond to the ideals of those whom
they grow to please. The very lines of this lily suggest dragons
and those other weird shapes which are pleasing to the eye
of the Oriental. This transformation in flowers was
worked in the same way that the transformation of
the pear, described here, was brought about.
LUTHER BURBANK
Here, in America, we like fruits that are soft,
large, sweet, luscious, juicy, aromatic, easy to
digest when eaten raw. Our pears grow that way.
In Japan and China they like fruits which are
hard, small, bitter, dry, acid — suitable only for
pickling, preserving, or cooking. The Chinese and
Japanese pear trees bear that kind of fruit.
Neither the Japanese pear, nor our American
type, is like the original wild parent which was
first discovered near the middle of Russia.
Each has changed — one toward one set of
ideals — and the other toward another set. .
*****
If we could lay bare before us the whole history
of the pear tree — if we could picture in our minds
its stages of progress beginning back in the times,
say, when instead of a fruit it bore only a seed
pod like the geranium's — we should see a record
of endless change, constant adaptation.
We should see that the soil, and the moisture,
and the sunshine, and the air, throughout the ages,
have played their parts in working the pear tree
forward.
We should see that other plants, crowding it
for room, or sapping the moisture from its feet,
or adding richness to the soil by their decaying
leaves and limbs, have done their share in hasten-
ing its improvement.
[122]
Less Rind, More Meat
This color photograph print shows a good
comparison of the orange as it formerly grew and as
it grows today, since the orange has been transformed to meet our
ideals. Simply by selecting the kinds which have been
propagated this improvement has been worked.
LUTHER BURBANK
We should see that the bees and butterflies and
birds, with their help, and the caterpillars, locusts
and deer in their efforts to destroy, have all served
to aid the onward march.
We should see all the while a steady change for
the better — sturdier pear trees, brighter blossoms,
more seed, better fruit.
We should see that, with the aid of the elements,
the pear tree adapted itself to exist, hardened
itself to withstand many soils and many weathers.
We should see that, with the unintended aid of
its plant and animal enemies, it gained strength
through overcoming them.
We should see that, through the bees, it was
helped into variation by mixing up heredities;
and, by the birds, it was helped into still further
variation by mixing up environments.
Then, overshadowing all of these influences,
there came into its life new influences of man —
man savage and civilized, Oriental and Occidental
— man with a liking for pears.
Here in America, we who have grown pears
have saved those which were the sweetest, the
largest, the juiciest, the most luscious — because
those were the ones we liked best.
When we have bought pear trees to plant in our
yards, we have chosen those which would give us
the kind of fruit we prefer.
[124]
ON ADAPTATION
The pear trees which have pleased us have
received our care and cultivation — and we have
multiplied them. The pear trees which have failed
to produce fruit up to our ideals we have neglected
and allowed to die — so that they have practically
disappeared from our orchards.
The Orientals, their tastes and likes running in
opposite directions from ours, have discouraged
pear trees which bore the kind of fruit we prefer,
and have selected, and saved, and fostered, and
propagated those which gave them the hard, bitter
fruit of their ideals.
And so the struggle for adaptation set in
motion by the soil, the warmth, the cold, the
moisture, and the winds, was supplemented by the
bees, and then by the birds, until now we can
read, in the result, our own influence and that of
the Japanese.
*****
There are differences between our dress and
the dress of the Orientals; between our religions
and the religions of the Orientals; between our
ambitions and the Oriental ambitions; between
our architecture and the architecture of the Orient
— all reflecting the national or racial differences
between the ideals of the two peoples.
And just as surely as the ideals of a people
influence the architecture with which they sur-
[125]
LUTHER BURBANK
round themselves, just as surely as they change
ambitions, mold religions, create dress styles,
just so surely do they influence and change the
characteristics of the plants in whose environment
they live.
*****
"When I say that man is the biggest element
in the environment of plants," said Mr. Burbank,
"I do not mean those few men who have devoted
their lives to the improvement of plants. I do not
mean the botanist, the horticulturist, the florist,
the nurseryman, the agricultural experimentalist.
I mean man in the mass — man busy with his dry
goods store, or his steel company, occupied with
his law, or his medicine, tired out from his daily
blacksmithing, or his carpentering. I mean just
man, the neighbor of plants, whether he be their
friend or their enemy — whoever and whatever he
is."
*****
It was the savage Indian who gave us, here in
America, the most important crop we have.
It was the Indian who found a wild grass
covering the plains and developed it into corn.
Or, to turn it the other way around, it was the
desire of the Indian for a food plant like this that
led the teosinte grass, by gradual adaptation, to
produce Indian corn or maize.
[126]
Our Corn and Its Tiny Parent
In the direct color photograph print shown here a typical
ear of "dent" corn is placed for comparison beside the tiny teosinte
ear which the American Indians discovered and improved.
LUTHER BURBANK
On Mr. Burbank's experiment farm there
grows, today, this same teosinte grass which the
Indians found.
It bears tiny ears with two rows of corn-like
kernels, on a cob the thickness of a lead pencil,
and two and a half to four inches long — slightly
less in length and diameter than an average head
of wheat.
From its earlier stage of pod corn, in which
each kernel grew in a separate husk like wheat,
teosinte represented, no doubt, a hard fought
survival and adaptation like that of the flowering
violet.
And when the Indians came into its environ-
ment it responded to their influence as the pansy
responded to care and cultivation in its new
dooryard home.
"Where teosinte had formerly relied upon the
frosts to loosen up the ground for its seed, it found
in the Indians a friend who crudely but effectively
scratched the soil and doubled the chance for its
baby plant to grow.
Where it had been choked by plant enemies,
and starved for air and sunlight by weeds, it found
in the Indians a friend who cut down and kept off
its competitors.
Where it had been often destroyed by the
animals before its maturity, it found the selfish
[128]
Some Other Forms of Corn
In the direct color photograph print shown here the
central ear and the ear at the right are "pod" corn, in which
each kernel is encased in a separate sheath. The ear at the left is
another form of teosinte with larger kernels than those in
the preceding print; from this latter the process by
which the kernels crowded each other until the cob
increased in size may be readily imagined.
LUTHER BURBANK
protection of the savages as grateful as though it
had been inspired by altruism.
Planted in patches, instead of straggling here
and there as best it could before, the teosinte
grass found its reproduction problem made easier
through the multitude of pollen grains now float-
ing through the air.
And so, by slow degrees, it responded to its
new environment by bearing more and bigger
seed.
As the seed kernels increased in numbers and
in size, the cob that bore them grew in length.
From two, the rows of kernels increased to
four, to six, to eight, to fourteen.
Here again the selfish motives of the savages
served to help the plant in its adaptation — for only
the largest ears and those with the best kernels
were saved for seed.
So, under cultivation, the wild grass almost
disappeared, and in its place there came, through
adaptation, the transformed Indian corn.
*****
"There were two wealthy men in England,"
said Mr. Burbank, "who took up the daffodil and
the narcissus, growing endless quantities of seed-
lings just for amusement.
"Both of these men, so it happened, were
bankers. One was a rather large, coarse, strong,
[130]
ON ADAPTATION
dominating type of man — not a repulsive man by
any means, but lacking, a little, in refinement and
the more delicate sensibilities.
"The other banker was a highly sensitive,
nervous, shrinking man with a great eye for detail,
a true appreciation of values, a man who looked
beneath the surface of things and saw beauty in
hidden truths, a man who thought much and said
little.
"These men were great rivals in their daffodil-
and narcissus-growing pastime, and each of them
succeeded in producing some wonderful variations
and adaptations in their plants.
"When these bankers died, their daffodil and
narcissus bulbs were offered for sale and fell into
the hands of a friend of mine, Peter Barr, a great
bulb expert of England.
"Peter Barr told me that though the bulbs
bought from those two estates were mixed and
planted indiscriminately on his proving grounds,
he could go through a field of those daffodils and
narcissuses and, simply by the blossoms, tell which
had come from one estate and which from the
other.
"The flowers that came from the bulbs that
represented the work of the first banker were
large, coarse, brightly colored, virile, strong
flowers — with a beauty that called to the passer-by
[131]
LUTHER BURBANK
as if out loud, and a self defiant attitude as if
bespeaking an ample ability to take care of
themselves.
"And the flowers which came from the bulbs
produced by the other banker were charmingly
delicate — not hardy, but rather shrinkingly artis-
tic— not loud in their color schemes, but softly
alluring with their subdued hues."
*****
It costs money to ship oranges, so the more the
meat and the less the rind, the less we waste in
transportation charges.
A comparison of the wild orange with the
cultivated fruit of our orange groves shows how
this fruit has adapted itself to our ideas of
economy.
*****
Lettuce in the head makes a more appetizing
salad than lettuce in large, sprawling leaves.
A comparison between wild lettuce and the
head lettuce on our green grocer's stand shows
plant adaptation to our salad demands.
*****
And so with celery, and artichokes — and every
plant that is grown for the market — wild, its adap-
tations are toward meeting wild environments;
cultivated, its adaptations are toward fitting itself
into our routine of life.
[132]
Wild Lettuce
A comparison between this and the large leaved, compact,
salad plant of our gardens shows the wonders of adaptation
which cultivation works. This wild lettuce is known in some places as
the "compass plant" because of the fact that its leaves, instead of
fanning out in all directions from the stalk, point always
north and south — an adaptation, no doubt, to protect
the plant from the heat of the mid-day sun.
Wild Celery
A comparison between this plant and the appetizing product
which is found in our markets shows how we have taught the plant
to give us straight, smooth, tender stalks, instead of the short,
woody stalk, with long branches above it, shown here.
ON ADAPTATION
We have seen the price which variation costs;
now we begin to see the value of it. Among
those violets, environment — the environment of
the present combining with heredity which is the
recorded environment of all the past — contrived
to see that there were no duplicates; that each
violet, a little different from its mate, might,
through its difference, be suited to a separate
purpose, or fitted to carry a separate burden, or
designed to fill a separate want.
If the violets had been as like as pins, they
would have stayed as like as pins when planted
in that friendly dooryard.
But because each had within it the power of
transmitting variation, the power of responding,
ever so little, to the trend of its surroundings, one
violet became a pansy.
*****
Among our human acquaintances we know
those who are sturdy, and those who are weak;
those who have well developed minds at the
expense of their muscles, and those who have well
developed muscles at the expense of their minds,
and those with a more evenly balanced develop-
ment; we know some who are tall and some who
are short; some with brown eyes and some with
blue; some who lean toward commerce, and some
who lean toward art; and on and on, throughout
[135]
LUTHER BURBANK
an infinite number of variations, an infinite
combination of those variations, each variation
representing the result of present environment
reacting upon all of the environments of the ages,
stored away.
As a people, we traveled b}' stage till the
railroad came; and then in a single generation,
because of the variation and the adaptability
among us, we found surveyors to push their
transits over the hills, and valleys, and streams;
we found woodchoppers to make ties, we found
steel makers who for the first time in their lives
fashioned a rail, we found engineers, and firemen,
and switchmen and superintendents, and railroad
presidents, each to play his part in fulfilling the
common desire for transportation, each able to
adapt himself to new duties — and all because of
this variation that is in us.
As a people, we submitted to a ruler across the
seas till among our variant individuals there
arose some who, different from the rest, adapted
themselves to the formulation of a declaration of
independence, the framing of a code of principles,
the organization of a successful revolution.
As a people, threatened with the constant peril
of cures which were worse than their diseases,
there appeared out of the variable mass one who
gave us antiseptic surgery.
[136]
ON ADAPTATION
Where are those who, a century ago, said that
railroads could never be? Where are the Tories
of revolutionary times? And where are those
barbers of ancient days with their cupping glasses
and their lancets and their leeches?
Ah, where are the pear trees of Eurasia that
failed to fit into the scheme of adaptation — where
are the geraniums that did not learn to advertise
to the bee — and where are the desert cactus plants
that could not protect themselves with thorns?
*****
On and on we go, one step backward some-
times, then two steps forward — marking time
awhile, then onward with a spurt — the pear tree,
the geraniums, the cactus plants, and we — each
individual among us a little different from the
rest, each with a separate combination of old
environment stored within us, finding always
an infinity of new environment to bring it out;
growing up together, the pear trees, the geraniums,
the cactus plants and we, all of us depending on
the others, and each of us playing his separate part
in the forward march of adaptation.
On and on we go, because of Infinite Variation.
*****
And so, from whatever viewpoint we approach
the study of plants — whether with an eager eye
to the future and the past, or whether with an
[137]
LUTHER BURBANK
eye, opened only a slit, to see simply the things
we can touch and feel, we find evidences of adap-
tation made possible through variation.
The violet, responding to kindness, became a
pansy.
The pear, responding to racial tastes, adapted
itself to the Orientals and to us.
Corn, responding to a need for food, produced
forty times the kernels which it had produced
before.
The orange, the lettuce, the celery, and every
cultivated plant that grows, responding to our
market demands, have transformed themselves to
meet a readier sale.
And those daffodil and narcissus seedlings, how
eloquently they tell of the adaptation of a plant
to fit an individual ideal!
*****
We studied electricity a long time without
much apparent practical benefit. Then suddenly
electric lights and trolley cars were everywhere.
We knew the principles of sound vibration for
centuries before the telephone and the phonograph
appeared, but it took less than a generation to
make them universal.
We dreamed motor carriages three hundred
years before we got one, and then, in a decade, we
awoke to find our dream come true.
[138]
ON ADAPTATION
And almost from the beginning, man has
studied the forces which go into the make-up of
life without much encouragement, till now these
ages of contemplation have begun to crystallize
into thornless cacti, stoneless plums, fragrant calla
lilies and a thousand other results as definite and
as practical as the trolley or the telephone or the
omnipresent touring car.
Who among us shall say what new plants even
a decade, now, mav bring forth?
— On and on we go; one step
backward, sometimes; then two
steps forward; marking time
awhile; then onward with a spurt.
The African Orange Daisy
For the purpose of illustrating the practical methods of har-
nessing heredity, let us take the African Orange daisy and see if , from
the variations secured, we may not produce a new pink daisy.
Let Us Now Produce a
New Pink Daisy
A Practical Lesson In
Harnessing Heredity
AN architect, in selecting the materials for his
structure, sends for limestone to Bedford,
Indiana, or for marble to Carrara, Italy, or
for bricks to Haverstraw, N. Y., or for redwood
rustic to California.
In the process of turning his blue print into a
building, he draws on the whole world — a little
here and a little there — for his supplies.
So, too, in the production of a new plant on
which we wish to try our architectural skill, we
must first seek out the things with which to build.
Only our search will be not a search for sub-
stances, but a search for stored up heredities — not
a search for bricks or stone or lumber, but a search
for living traits.
*****
The sturdy dandelions in our vacant lots, with
their parachute-like seed balls, reveal a structural
[Volume I — Chapter V]
LUTHER BURBANK
ingenuity and a fitness to survive which may have
cost ten thousand generations of patient struggle.
The sweetness of our cherries, our grapes, our
plums, has been developed only through ages
and ages of response to environment, with some
environments so oft repeated that they have
hardened into heredity.
The flowers on our lawns may have acquired
their colors in Germany, or in Ecuador, or in
Siberia; our nuts reflect flavors picked up through
a world-wide migration; and even our early
vegetables show traits which hark back to times
before animals and men came into their lives.
So, just as the earth has stored up limestone
in Indiana, and marble in Italy, and brick-clay in
New York, and ten-thousand-year-old redwoods in
California, for the architect to draw upon, just so,
in a world full of plants, representing an infinity
of ancestry with its infinity of heredity, will we
find an infinity of traits with which to build.
If we wish to change the color of a flower, or
its scent, or its size, or its adaptability to climate —
if we have it in mind to transform a tree or its
fruit, or to give any plant a new trait or a new
habit — the most practical way is to dig the quality
we want out of the mass of heredity about us.
*****
"I thought," says some one, "that plants could
[142]
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY
be transformed merely by changing the environ-
ments in which they grow."
"So they can," replies Mr. Burbank, "if time is
no object. But the quick and economical way is
to take advantage of the combined environments
of the past which are at our instant disposal; to
short-cut to our result by using well established
traits and thoroughly formed habits, rather than
to spend the years or lifetimes which might be
necessary to produce new traits and new habits
from the beginning.
"It is better to seek out, first, what nature has
stored away for us, and then to use new environ-
ments to improve or intensify traits and habits
which already have the advantage of several
centuries of start.
"It is the same principle of economy which we
apply to everything we do.
"So long as there is plenty of coal within easy
reach it does not pay us to build machines to
utilize the energy of the sun's rays or of the ocean
tides. And, similarly, so long as there are untold
thousands of plants embodying, in some form,
almost every conceivable trait we might desire —
untold thousands of plants like the cactus waiting
only our attention to make them useful — we can
hardly afford to waste time in doing what nature
already, laboriously, has done."
[143]
LUTHER BURBANK
The hard part, always, is to make the start.
We who are late sleepers, for example, know
the weeks of discouraging attempts it takes to
fix the habit of arising at seven instead of eight,
or at six instead of seven. Yet, once we have
thoroughly accustomed ourselves to the new hour
of awakening, it is just as difficult to get back to
the old hour as it was to get away from it.
It is as if the tendencies within us, having
accommodated themselves to each other and to
our surroundings, cling together tenaciously to
maintain the equilibrium between themselves;
when we change our surroundings they adjust
themselves to the change with difficulty; but once
adjusted, hold together as firmly again as they
held before.
So in plant life; when we transplant a flower or
a tree, it shows signs, in accommodating itself to
its new surroundings, of evident distress; it looks
sickly, its leaves droop, it gives many outward
proofs of the inward struggle which it is under-
going.
As soon, however, as its suddenly scattered
tendencies have collected themselves, the plant
begins an era of immediate improvement, and
does as well or better than it did before trans-
planting— as well, in fact, as its new surroundings
will permit.
[144]
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY
If new habits are hard to start, new traits are
harder. It is hard to teach a plant to twine when
it has never twined before, or to persuade it to
be pink when it has always been yellow; just as
it is hard to get a boy interested in the study of
law when his likes, all his life, have been along
the lines of engineering or mechanics.
In the establishment of a new trait, in fact,
the whole motion of life must be interrupted, its
momentum arrested, the resulting inertia over-
come, and new momentum in a new direction
gained.
But, if every difficulty has its recompense, we
are well repaid for the labor of acquiring or
instilling a new trait by the fact that, once
acquired, it has a tendency of its own to increase
and expand and grow.
The boy who finally gets interested in law, who
gets past the point where it becomes an irksome
drudgery, begins, at length, to develop a steadfast
love for his work so that what was to him, once, a
bug-bear at last becomes an absorbing ideal.
The cactus, for example, which produced its
first spines with difficulty, now gets more and
more spiny, although the need for spines has
disappeared. Our flowers grow more beautiful,
our fruits more luscious as their tendencies gain
momentum.
[145]
LUTHER BURBANK
We may take it as a rule, almost, that a habit,
once fixed, hardens: that a trait, once established,
grows stronger and stronger.
The easiest way, therefore, is to work with
heredity, and not against it — to spend a month
searching out a desirable trait or habit, rather
than to spend a year or a decade trying to
overcome an undesirable one.
*****
And, now, to a practical experiment.
From almost any seed house we may procure
the seeds of two African wild flowers. One is the
African orange daisy, the other a white daisy of
the same family.
The orange daisy is a sun-loving flower, as its
beautiful, rich tint clearly testifies.
The white daisy, by its whiteness, shows equally
unmistakable evidence of an ancestry which has
preferred the shade.
"Bright colored flowers," said Mr. Burbank,
"are almost invariably those which have grown
in the sun. White flowers are either those which
bloom at night, or which, if blooming in the day
time, have stayed in the shade."
"Because the sun reacts with the soil to produce
bright colors, while the shade does not?" was
asked.
"No," replied Mr. Burbank. "I prefer to believe
[146]
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY
that the bees make the colors. The flowers which
grow in the bright light need their brilliance to
attract the insects; flowers in the shade are more
easily observed if they are light or white in color;
it is all a matter of advertising contrast; and,
throughout ages and ages, each particular flower
has been striving to perfect a color contrast scheme
of its own. It may be that the combination of sun
and soil makes possible brighter colors than the
combination of shade and soil; but wind-loving
plants, like corn and trees, which grow in the sun,
do not bedeck themselves in colors — only the
flowers which find it necessary to attract the
insects.
"In practice, at any rate, the color of a flower
is one of the reliable guides in the study of its
life-history."
Taking the orange daisy and its white cousin
side by side, we see at once a family resem-
blance. The leaf formation, the root formation,
the arrangement and the number of petals, the
arrangement of stamens and pistils, bespeak the
fact that here are two plants of a kind; one orange
and one white; the white one taller a little, more
graceful perhaps, and slightly less hardy; but
cousins, beyond doubt, having within them many
parallel strains of heredity.
Let us assume, then, that the orange of the
[147]
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LUTHER BURBANK
orange daisy is the heredity of ages of sunshine,
and the white of the other daisy is the inheritance
of ages of shade; that both started from the same
point, and that one found itself growing in cleared
fields, while around the other developed a forest
of shade; so that, finally, as environment piled up
on environment and accumulated into heredity,
each flower became so firmly fixed in its own
characteristics as to constitute a species, as man
has chosen to call it, of its own.
If we take the seeds of the African orange
daisy, and plant them in the shade, they will
still produce orange flowers. That is stored up
heredity. No doubt, if we continued, year after
year, to replant them in the shade for a century
or so, they would begin to transform themselves
to white as the other daisy did.
If we plant the white African daisy in the
sunshine, it will still give us flowers of white —
the heredity of ages overbalancing the pull of
immediate environment, and needing a long con-
tinued repetition of environment to balance and
finally overcome it; but if we were to keep it in
the sun throughout enough generations, it would,
no doubt, bear us flowers of brilliant orange.
Here, then, is a single plant reflecting two
divergent strains of heredity — one orange, one
white — one sturdy, one weak — each strain so
[1481
We Find a White Cousin
Searching the African daisy family we perceive that one
branch has been stranded from its kin and, finding itself in the
shade, has become a white daisy. From the many similarities
between the two flowers there can be no question that the
white and the African orange daisy have a common
ancestry — although some scientists classify
them as different species, while some
merely classify them as dif-
ferent varieties of the
same species.
LUTHER BURBANK
thoroughly fixed that in a lifetime it would be
impossible, through pure environment, to over-
throw it.
Let us next take a twenty-foot flower bed, say,
divide it in the middle, plant one side solid with
the orange daisies, and the other side solid with
white daisies, and let the bees and the breezes mix
those heredities up to produce for us the new pink
daisy which we have planned to produce.
Up come the orange flowers, and up come the
white. The breezes and the bees carry the pollen
from flower to flower; the petals fall away, and
disclose the pods of fertile seed in which, for the
first time, these two strains of heredities are
combined.
In the millions of seeds which we can beat
out of these pods, there are some with the white
tendencies stored away unaltered, some with the
orange tendencies still predominant — some with
white pulling evenly against orange to make a
red, some with orange slightly stronger than white,
and all of the infinity of variation in between.
We shall find in those seeds the mixed ten-
dencies not only of the two species, but of all of
the families of two species, and of the individuals
of those families; mixed, upset, disturbed — so
thoroughly that, not only will the life history of
both parents be laid bare in the resulting plants,
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but through the blends, new characteristics, prob-
ably never seen before, will show themselves.
Here we have taken two plants which, since
the beginning, have been storing up traits; each
working out its own destiny; each separated from
the other, perhaps by a mountain range or a lake,
and thus never before brought to a place where
those heredities could combine; then in a single
season, through combination, we produce the seed
for a new daisy reflecting every conceivable blend
of those different heredities.
*****
When we plant this seed the following spring,
we shall have pure orange daisies and pure white
daisies, pink ones, purple ones, yellow ones;
daisies large and daisies small; daisies with big
black centers, and daisies in which the centers are
colored the same as the outside edges.
We shall find some a deeper orange than
the orange daisy because the balance which has
determined the established shade of orange has
been upset.
We shall find purer whites than the white
daisy ever knew— as a result of the upset.
We shall find daisies with petals whose color
front and back is the same, and daisies with
different colors inside and out.
We shall, in short, find all of the old inherit-
[152]
A Broadening of the Petals
One of the first variations which we shall see in our bed
of crosses is the white daisy shown here in which the color of the
white parent is unchanged but which has broad petals
instead of the narrow ones of both parents.
LUTHER BURBANK
ances of the flower and of the combinations of
them — all of the colors, scents if there be any,
shapes, sizes, forms, elements of strength or weak-
ness— uncovered before us.
And between the white and the orange we have
but to select the particular pink flower of our
fancy.
If the flower we select, perchance, showed some
weakness, or if its tint were a little too light or
too dark, or if for any other reason among this
infinite color variation we did not find the exact
result we sought, another season or another would
surety bring it forth; for next year, instead of
planting white and orange, we should plant a
selection of our new daisies, and instead of getting
a combination of two parentages, we should get a
combination of combinations.
Then, having secured the color called for in
our original mental blue print, we might find
structural improvements to make in the flower —
we might want to increase its height or to
lengthen the daily period of its opening, or to
rearrange its petals into a more chrysanthemum-
like form, or to increase or decrease the size
of its center — or to accomplish any one of a
number of other ideals which we may have set up
for our production.
So on we go, season after season, always
[154]
More Orange in the Center
Selecting another white daisy from the patch we find the same broad
petals, but with a greater suggestion of orange in the center.
LUTHER BURBANK
selecting, getting one this year which bears a
podful of seeds for next, with the bees and the
winds anxious to carry on the work, narrowing
our lines of heredity down and down and down,
until finally some day — maybe fourteen months
after the experiment began, or maybe fourteen
years, we can say: "Here is a plant such as no
man ever saw before — here is the exact plant
which we have planned."
*****
"But will the seed of this new pink daisy,"
some one asks, "produce more daisies of this same
kind of pink?"
"Of all of the seeds of that daisy," says Mr.
Burbank, "there might not be one which repro-
duced its parent pink. The seeds of that daisy
sown together in a bed might easily show as great
a variation as the seeds of the white and the orange
showed when they were first planted after the
bees and the winds had done their work.
"But that need be no discouragement. By
dividing the roots of the daisy we can, in a single
season, from a single plant, produce a whole bed
of plants — each similar to the original plant
because each, in fact, is a part of the original
plant.
"We should, at the start, then, propagate our
pink daisy by dividing the roots. We should
[156]
A Full Orange Center
Looking still further into the white daisies
which we have produced we finally find one which has
center of solid orange. If we were to take all of the white
daisies from the patch we should find no two alike but an
almost infinite range of individual difference.
LUTHER BURBANK
find that for practical purposes it would thus be
possible to produce all of the daisies we desired.
We might never even care to make use of the seed.
But if we did, by keeping our new pink daisies
together year after year, in eight years, or perhaps
ten or fourteen, pink being crossed with pink, and
the upset equilibrium restored, we should find that
we were getting seeds which came true, or nearly
true, to type.
"You see, we upset heredity to produce varia-
tion; then we let it settle down to a balance to
perpetuate the particular variation which we have
chosen."
*****
The architect can always build a second struc-
ture better than the first, and the plant improver,
likewise, finds in each experiment a multitude of
new suggestions for the production of still other
changes or improvements.
In even the handful of daisy variations which
can be reproduced here, there are to be seen
countless new tendencies, any one of which might
lead to the perfection of a wholly different, if not
a better flower.
There are, of course, the variations in size —
and those with the long petals show that with
encouragement the flower, simply by quantity
production and continued selection, might produce
[158]
More Evidence of Broad Petals
Taking up the orange and yellow daisies in the
patch, we find the same tendency toward a broadening of
the petal which, taking back to old ancestry, evidently, changes
the appearance of the flower, as can be seen by comparing
with the direct color photograph print on page 149,
LUTHER BURBANK
an offspring with blossoms three inches or four
or more in diameter.
There are, in the pictures shown here, some
which indicate a tendency toward doubleness
which gives rise to the thought that the new
pink daisy, if desirable, might be entirely filled
up with petals so that its center would not show
at all, even as its very distant relative, the old
maid's marigold, has been filled up — an interesting
process which will be explained later.
Those daisies with the tendency toward dark-
ened petals at the inner end might be cultivated
and selected until finally they produced an off-
spring of a purplish black in the center with only
a fringe of color, or, until the whole inside was
solid black.
In other of the variations which are shown, it
might be noted that some are pink, or yellow, or
of colors in between, inside and out, while others
show deep red or purple streaks on the backs of
their petals. From these it might reasonably be
expected to produce a daisy having one color
within, and another color without.
From the bed of seedlings pictured, with no
two daisies exactly alike, there might be prepared
a list of a thousand different tendencies, each
susceptible of cultivation, each the possible
starting point of some new transformation.
[160]
A Better Orange Than Its Parent
Looking further among the yellow flowers we find one
which has a more brilliant orange even than its parent. A
comparison between this plant and the one opposite page 158 will show
not only the difference in color, but the fact that this orange
daisy retains much of the gracefulness of its parent.
LUTHER BURBANK
It is only when the life history of a plant, with
all of its divergent tendencies, is uncovered in
some such way as this, that the plant architect can
see the full possibilities of further improvement.
*****
The pink daisy which Mr. Burbank grew
especially for the purpose of illustrating this
chapter may, or may not, be a desirable produc-
tion— it may or may not repay the thought and
effort which it cost — but it shows the simplest
method which the plant architect has within his
reach — a method which, applied in the same way
toward the accomplishment of a more utilitarian
purpose, has meant and will, more and more,
continue to mean, untold fortunes of added wealth
to the world.
*****
In order that the illustration may be complete,
let us sketch some of the possibilities of employing
this method.
Let us begin with some garden vegetable which
for centuries has been picking up traits along the
lines in which we have encouraged it — working
away, always, from the wild, and toward the
accomplishment of our ideals.
Let us say that we have been selecting it,
unconsciously perhaps, for its tenderness, or
sweetness, or early ripening, or productivity, or
[162]
Variation on the Outside
In the same patch we find not only evidences
of heredity on the face of the flower, but on its back.
The bouquet pictured here shows, on the back of the petals, yellotv
tendencies, greenish tendencies and even purple streaks
such as neither of the parents show.
LUTHER BURBANK
along any line which has made it more desirable
or more marketable.
Its evolution, then, has been simply a slow
response to a new environment which for the first
time in its history included man.
Suppose, now, that we desire to work, in a
single season or a dozen seasons, an improvement
in this vegetable which will overshadow all of the
improvement which countless generations of culti-
vation and unconscious selection have wrought.
Our first step is to secure its wild counterpart —
inedible, maybe, sour, perhaps, tough, no doubt;
wholly undesirable as compared with the plant
which the seed bought at any grocery store will
produce.
Nevertheless in the wild brother of our plant
there is confined an infinity of old heredity just
as an infinity of old heredity was confined in
those two daisies; and the bees, and the winds,
can bring forth variation between the tame and
the wild, just as striking and just as widely
divergent as the variations in the daisies.
Perhaps the first attempt to mix up the
heredities of the tame and the wild might produce
no improvement — only retrogression. But if we
keep on mixing heredities and combining com-
binations of them, we shall soon see before us
evidences of all of the tendencies of the plant —
[164]
We Could Make a Purple Daisy
In our daisy patch we find one white daisy, unlike
the rest, with deep purple edges on the ends of its petals. If
were m search of a purple daisy we might try the seed
this, and from the variations resulting produce, at last, a
daisy which was all of the purple color shown here.
of
LUTHER BURBANK
tendencies which, though perhaps not desirable,
point the way to an end worthy of accomplishment.
Then, instead of working with a single wild
and a single cultivated plant, if we seek out a
dozen wild plants or a hundred of them — some
plants from mountain environments and some
from swamps, some from rich woodland soil, and
some from the desert, we shall get a still better
idea of the possibilities stored within the plant —
possibilities which need only combination and
selection to bring forth a perfected product.
*****
Or, suppose we have a tree which bears
delicious fruit in small quantities.
Let us then find one with a tendency to over-
produce, even though its fruit, in size, flavor and
appearance, be inferior.
In some combination between the two, simply
by following the leads which those combinations
themselves will give, we shall in a few years, very
likely, discover one variation which combines the
productiveness of one strain of heredity with the
deliciousness of another.
*****
Or, perhaps, we have a plant which bears us
berries of wonderful flavor, but too small to be
marketable.
Let us find a plant with large, beautiful berries,
[166]
Our First Pink Daisy
Looking over the variations in our patch we
discover one which has a dirty pinkish color. It is a step
toward the end which we have started to achieve, yet is far from
a satisfactory result. The petals are too broad and too
stubby, and not evenly or gracefully arranged.
LUTHER BURBANK
even though they be insipid, and see if, between
the two, by matching heredities, there is not to
be found some new berry which is luscious, large
and beautiful.
**><**
Or, supposing that in our own particular soil
there are varieties we should like to grow which
fail to prosper, while other less desirable varieties
do well.
Our problem then is but the combination of
heredities to bring the desirability of one with the
hardiness of another into a single new plant which,
as it were, we make to order.
*****
Or, if there is a variety which will not
withstand the rigor of our winters, perhaps it can
be combined with a poorer variety which has been
educated to them.
Or, the other way around, if there is a plant
which withers in the heat of our summers, perhaps
some combination can be effected with an already
existing brother or cousin, which, throughout the
generations, has conquered the obstacle of heat.
*****
And so on throughout the whole world-wide
range of environment.
We shall find plants which have grown accus-
tomed to the wet, and plants which are hardened
[168]
A Second Step in Selection
Looking further we find another pink daisy with longer petals, but
too small a center, and still of a muddy color.
LUTHER BURBANK
to the dry; plants which thrive in heat and plants
which thrive in cold; plants which like sandy soil,
and plants which can do well even in adobe clay;
plants which have become used to the glare of
the sun, and those which live retiring lives in the
deepest recesses of the shade; plants which bear
flowers large and small, early and late, of short
seasons and of long, fragrant and unscented,
simple and complex. We shall find fruit-flavors
which are sour, sweet, acid, bitter; fruit skins
which are smooth, fuzzy; fruits themselves that
are large, small, even, irregular, coarse, delicate;
we shall find those which will stand shipment
across a continent and those which spoil almost
as soon as they are picked.
We shall find a range of differences in wild
plants, as great as the range of environments in
which they have grown.
And we shall find a range of differences in
cultivated plants as great as the range of differ-
ences in races and nations and individuals who
have grown them.
*****
"I saw an interesting illustration on the relation
between heredity and environment at the circus
one day," said Mr. Burbank.
"There, in a wire cage, was a tiny dog together
with a lot of monkeys.
[170]
Try, Try Again
With all of our pink daisies before us we find one,
now, with a center which is larger and more brilliant and with
petals more nearly like those of the parent— slender
and graceful without seeming stubby.
LUTHER BURBANK
"While I was watching, a trainer appeared and
snapped his whip.
"The monkeys quit their play with the dog,
ran around in a circle, and climbed up the wire
of the cage.
"The little dog followed them, but could not
climb. He would start up and drop back, start up
again and drop back again.
"Then he would look down at his feet, and if
a dog ever showed surprise, that dog did. He
seemed to be wondering why he could not climb
as monkeys do.
"The environment was there, but the heredity
was different.
"We see the same thing in plant life. The
sweet peas with their tendrils and the nasturtiums
with their leaves can climb like the monkeys,
while other plants can not be forced to climb
because there is no climbing heredity within them.
"You may try to make corn climb a hop pole,
or to make hops grow straight in the air without
a pole or string. But in a lifetime you can not
succeed.
"It is heredity, heredity, heredity. Environment,
unless oft-repeated, only serves to bring heredity
out.
"The climbing monkeys and the disappointed
dog show us an important truth in our work.
[172]
At Last the Pink Daisy
From the pink variations which we have selected from our original
daisy patch, we finally, perhaps the first season, or perhaps the second,
secure a pink daisy of the same size, shape and gracefulness
as the orange daisy with which we started on page 140.
LUTHER BURBANK
"If we want to take advantage of a climbing
tendency in a plant or an animal, let us by all
means find a plant or an animal in whose heredity
that climbing tendency is a part. Let us not try
to teach monkeys to bark, or dogs to swing from
the limbs of trees by their tails; let us not try to
make corn climb the hop pole, or to transform
hops into shade trees.
"Maybe these things could be done. In fact,
with unlimited time, there is no question that
they could be done. But with plenty of plants
about us with ready-made heredities of which we
can avail ourselves in a single season, it would be
folly to try to accomplish the same result in a
harder way, well knowing that only the twentieth
or thirtieth generation ahead of us could see the
results of our work.
"In our search for heredities we shall find
many plants which are scarcely worth working
with — plants whose environments have not led
into heredities which are desirable for our ends.
"But at the same time we shall find scores and
scores of plants in the least expected places —
plants like the cactus, which, at first, seem impos-
sible of use — which with a little encouragement
yield us rare heredities for our work."
*****
When the masons, and carpenters, and deco-
[174]
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY
rators have finished the architect's house, and the
keys are turned over to the new owner — then,
and from that moment, the structure begins to
depreciate until it crumbles in decay. The
furniture movers dent the stair rails, the chil-
dren scratch the doors, dust begins to darken and
destroy the lustre of polished surfaces; and the
sun and night, and the frosts and the thaws, and
the rain and the heat, slowly and irresistibly carry
the structure on its downward grade.
But when the architect of plants has combined
old traits into the production of his ideal, he has
fashioned something which, if his work is well
done, the suns, and the rains, and the frosts, and
the winds will not depreciate; he has produced a
living thing which, in spite of discouragements,
and neglect, and abuse, will keep on, and on, and
on — improving as it goes.
*****
How few, indeed, are the materials which the
architect of buildings has at his command, when
compared with the range of living traits which the
architect of plants may call into play!
— Our search, then, is a search for stored
up heredities — a search for living traits.
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Short-cuts Into
the Centuries to Come
Better Plants Secured By
Hurrying Evolution
WITH the bees buzzing about in the thou-
sands of blossoms on your experiment
farm," said a visitor, "I should think
that the plants would get all mixed up; I
should think that the daisies would be crossed
with carnations, and the carnations with balloon
flowers, and the balloon flowers with poppies, and
the poppies with cactus."
*****
If we were to watch a bee at work, we should
quickly discover one reason why this does not
happen — one reason, at least, why the cherries,
and the prunes, and the roses, and the geraniums
have not long ago been reduced to a scrambled
mess.
Our observation of the bee would show that, in
going from flower to flower, it goes only to flowers
of a kind.
[Volume I — Chapter VI]
LUTHER BURBANK
We should see that, if it starts in the morning
with clover, it visits no other blossom during the
day but clover blossoms. Or if it begins on an
orange tree, it passes the cherries, the peaches, the
apples and anything else which may be in bloom,
but will go miles to find orange trees; or if it starts
on onions, then the geraniums and the carnations
and the poppies have no attraction for it.
Which, by the way, is the reason that the bees
produce, for themselves and for us, clover honey,
and orange honey, and onion honey, each with a
distinct flavor of its own.
But there are other reasons why the flowers do
not get mixed up.
One is that while some flowers advertise to the
bees, others advertise only to the humming birds
— the bees can not get into the bird flowers and
the birds can not get into the bee flowers; some
flowers open in the early morning, and some
toward noon; some bloom in April, and some in
July.
The pollen granules of some flowers are so
large that they can not push their tubes down into
the egg nests of flowers with small pistils; there
are structural differences between the various
families of plants which seem to make cross
pollenation almost impossible; and so on through
a wide range of reasons why certain plants are
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LUTHER BURBANK
not readily mated with others — which will lead
us, in a later chapter, into the interesting study of
plant affinities.
*****
The bees helped us to make a pink daisy
because, through heredity, the daisies of our first
planting gave daisy nectar, though their colors
were white and orange. And in seven out of any
ten experiments which we might try, we could
safely entrust the work of pollenation to the bees,
or birds, or other messengers with whom the
plants have built up partnerships.
But in those other three, the most important
of the ten, perhaps, we should find that the
pollenation would have to be done by hand.
If, for example, we desired to effect a combina-
tion between two flowers, one of which blooms in
the spring and the other in mid-summer, the
bees could be of no service. We should have to
take the pollen of the early blooming flower and
carefully save it until it could be applied to the
other.
If we desired to effect a combination between
a bird flower and a bee flower, even if in bloom
at the same time, we should find it necessary to
attend to the pollenation ourselves.
If we had it in mind to effect a cross between
a particularly large, insipid plum and a small,
[180]
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
highly flavored plum on another tree, or if we
desired to effect a cross between any two selected
parents, we should find it necessary to do our own
work of pollenation.
*****
It would seem that much of the ingenuity
evident in nature is directed toward a two-fold
end:
First, toward producing an endless combination
of heredities in plants of the same kind — which,
to give them a name, we may call crosses.
And second, to prevent the combination of
things out of kind — which, to distinguish them
from crosses, we may call hybrids.
The first aim ensures infinite variation — the
mixing up of parallel strains of heredity in such a
way that no two living things are exactly alike,
and that, in each new balance of tendencies pro-
duced, there is the possibility of an improvement.
The second explains why, though all roses differ
from each other, yet all are roses — why, though
every living thing has its own individuality, its
own personality, each bears the unmistakable
characteristics of its kind.
*****
"Here and there through nature, nevertheless,
are hybrids. Are these accidents — the result of
some carelessness, some lapse?"
[181]
LUTHER BURBANK
"In nature," said Mr. Burbank, "there are no
accidents, no lapses. Everything that is, is a
definite part of the Scheme of Things.
"We see crossing between kinds and realize
its purpose, and see its value in the Scheme,
because it is going on about us always, everywhere
— because it is a quick-moving process which we
can observe without doubt or difficulty.
"But when, on the other hand, we see the
provisions in nature against crossing out of kind,
those numberless ingenious devices designed to
prevent the production of hybrids, we have no
right to conclude that hybrids are not a part of
the Scheme of Things.
"They are — else there would be no hybrids.
"Crossing between things of the same kind is
a continuous, active process necessary to the
production of better and better individuals.
"Crossing out of kind is a slower process which,
I believe, has just as definite an end as crossing
within kinds — excepting that its object, slowly and
surely attained, is the production not of better
individuals, but of better kinds."
*****
Let us go back to our African daisies.
If we read their histoiw aright, there was,
first, an orange flower which grew in the open
veldt — a flower which accommodated itself to the
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LUTHER BURBANK
peculiarities of the soil and the air in which it
grew, and to its plant, insect, and animal neighbors
— so that it became a thriving, successful race,
each generation a little stronger — each year seeing
it increase in numbers and spread in territory.
In its spread, we may well imagine that the
winds, or the animals, carried its seed over
otherwise impassable barriers — just as human
environment carries one son to New York to
become a lawyer, another to Pittsburg to become
a steel maker, and another to the gold fields of
Nevada.
Thus reaching out, always into new environ-
ments, some branch of this daisy family found
itself in the midst of a clump of trees — trees which
multiplied and grew till they obscured the sun
and left the tiny plants in the obscurity of dense
shade.
As the trees grew (and just as slowly, quite
likely), the daisies at their feet accommodated
themselves to their new environment — they
adapted themselves to the shade and moisture —
they had less competition, perhaps, from other
small plants and so became less sturdy — they
changed their color to the one best suited to
attract available messengers of reproduction.
At this point we interrupted the evolution of
the African daisy by planting the white and the
[184]
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
orange together and securing, in the pink one, an
immediate blend of their divergent heredities.
But it requires no stretch of the imagination
to believe that, had we left them to their course,
the same end would have been accomplished a
century, or a thousand centuries, from now; that
the same migratory tendency which took the
white daisies into the woods would, in time, have
brought them out of the woods and into the
sunshine; or that the same tendency which got
one division of the family into the woods would
eventually have taken other divisions to the same
woods; and that, sooner or later, there would have
been white daisies growing alongside of orange
daisies, so that, through the slow processes of
nature, the same result which we produced by
artificial means would have been achieved.
And so, in all of our experiments with plants,
we shall find that we are not working against
evolution, but with it; that we are merely pro-
viding it with short-cuts into the centuries to
come — short-cuts which do not change the final
result, but only hasten its accomplishment.
And who shall say that we, helping our plants
to do in 1913 what without our help they might not
be able to do before 3913 — who shall say that we
are not elements in evolution just as the bees, and
the birds, and the butterflies, and the winds, and
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ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
the rains, and the frosts — who shall say that
our influence, inestimably greater than any other
influence in the life of a plant — is not an intended
part of progress in the Scheme of Things?
*****
In hurrying evolution, we can, and do, play a
more important part, even, than that of bringing
about crosses, or hybrids, which the bees or the
birds would never make.
The greatest service which we render toward
the advancement of plant life is that of selection,
endless, skillful selection.
The pink daisy was really, after all, the result,
principally, of selection. The important thing we
did was not to bring a mass of daisies together
for the bees to work on; the important thing was
to select orange daisies, and white daisies, with
the purpose of producing a pink one. Then, with
a bedful of variations, we selected again — selected,
this time, for the shade we wanted, and destroyed
the rest.
Afterward, with that pink daisy, we began
a still further course of selection, selecting the
largest, the hardiest, the tallest; and no matter
how long we might continue to grow pink daisies,
we should keep on selecting, selecting, selecting —
each step in our selection, because it has the
human mind behind it— because it is actuated by
[187]
Some Cactus Seedlings — II
After making his first selection from the "flats," Mr. Burbank
transplants his seedlings in the ground, as shown. From the
time the seedling first shows its head until the final object is
achieved, there is selection, selection, constant selection. The
points for which he watches in his process of selection are
clearly explained in the treatment of each specific subject.
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
purpose and desire — each step in this selection
representing an advance, which, without our help,
might take a hundred or a thousand years to
bring about.
So, in working out any ideal in plant improve-
ment, the first factor and the last one is selection.
Selection enters into the ideal itself, it enters into
every step of its accomplishment, and it enters
into the production of every succeeding plant
which represents that accomplishment.
*****
"If you believe that nature makes no mistakes,
and has no lapses, how can you account for the
evident unfitness of so many individual plants
to survive — how can you account for the
wastefulness and extravagance which is apparent
throughout all forms of plant life?"
"Leaving nature out of it for the moment,"
replied Mr. Burbank, "let us look at the work
which I have been doing here for forty years.
There has hardly been a time during this period
when I have had less than twenty-five hundred
experiments under way, and there have been
seasons when from three to five thousand were in
process. I estimate that, right on this three
acre tract, considerably more than one hundred
thousand definite, separate experiments in plant
life have been conducted, in all.
[189]
LUTHER BURBANK
"Some of the experiments which have taken
the most time and cost the most money have
produced no apparent result; and some of the
results which seem most important have been
achieved in the simplest way, with the least
expenditure of effort.
"Out of the entire total of experiments tried,
there have been not more than two or three
thousand which, so far, have resulted in a better
fruit, or a better flower, or a more marketable nut,
or a more useful plant.
"On the other hand, I should feel repaid for all
the work I have done if only a dozen of my
experiments had turned out to be successes. It
is the nature of experimentation — we must try
many things in order to accomplish a few.
"And this is just exactly what is going on in
nature all the time — excepting that where we
might get one success out of forty failures, there
might be but one out of a thousand or a million
if the plants were left to work out their own
improvement, unaided.
"Then, after all, the unsuccessful experiments
are failures only in a comparative sense.
"If you have ever watched the bridge builders
constructing a concrete causeway, you must have
seen the false construction which was necessary —
the stout wooden structure into which the plastic
[190]
Mr. Burbank at Work
In the foreground of this print it will be seen that three
of the flowers are separated from the rest by being tied with
white string. As he goes about his gardens, Mr. Burbank picks out
those flowers which come nearest his ideals and marks them
thus that their seed may be saved. The entire process of
marking and recording not only flowers but all other
plants will be explained in the proper place.
LUTHER BURBANK
material was poured — a costly structure in itself
which was put up only to be torn down.
"We can not call this wooden structure extrav-
agance or waste, because it was a necessary step
in the completion of the work. And so, while,
in nature, we find many individuals which are
weak — many steps which look like backward
steps instead of forward ones — many apparent
oversights, yet I prefer to believe, and my own
work has shown me that this is true, that these
are simply elements in a necessary scheme of
false construction, without which the final object
could not be achieved.
"The price of all progress is experiment; suc-
cessful experiment is brought about, always, at
a terrific expense of individual failures.
"But who shall say that progress, any progress,
is not worth all it costs?"
*****
Nature gets one success out of a million tries;
Mr. Burbank has gotten one out of forty. The
figures may not be exact, but the basic fact
underlying them is none the less important.
It was simply by eliminating steps and pro-
viding short-cuts, and bringing the human mind
with its ideals, will, judgment and persistence into
the environment of the African daisy that we were
able to produce a pink one in a few months when,
[192]
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
without our influence, nature might easily have
taken till 3913.
*****
The real work before us, then, is to study
nature's processes — to learn to read the history
of plants, to uncover tendencies and understand
their trends — and then to provide short-cuts so
that the far distant improvement may be made
a matter of months, instead of centuries.
These short-cuts, and their application, from
this point on, will be our principal study; perhaps
a single illustration here, more comprehensive
than that of the daisy, will serve to give a clearer
idea of their kind:
Let us take, then, as a specimen, Mr. Burbank's
methods in the production of a new cherry.
First, as with the daisy, there must be an ideal
— some particular kind of cherry of which we
have made a mental blue print. Let us say that
our blue print calls for a large, sweet cherry,
which will ripen early and bear long — an eating
cherry rather than a canning cherry, so that
appearance is a great factor.
The first step would be to gather in our
elements; to pick out a large, beautiful cherry
which, after the manner of many large, beautiful
fruits, may be more or less insipid in taste; then to
select another cherry, size and appearance incon-
[193]
LUTHER BURBANK
sequential, which has the delightful flavor our
plans and specifications call for.
Let us take not one of each of these types, but
a number of them, and then when they have
bloomed, let us, by hand, cross them back and
forth, making in all, we will say, five hundred
crosses; each tied with a certain color of string
for the purpose of later identification.
The petals of the blossoms which we have
crossed will fall away; long stems bearing green
cherries will begin to take their place; and finally,
the twigs which we have marked with strings will
tempt us with their ripened fruit.
*****
There is an interesting legend of the French
girls who used to take apple boughs in blossom
and shake the pollen over the apple flowers of
another tree, a legend of the wonderful variation
in the apples which they secured.
And here and there in our work we shall see
exceptions to the general rule, which seem to
prove that the French legend perhaps was founded
on fact.
These exceptions, which will form the basis of
an interesting series of experiments for us later,
need have no bearing on our present cherry work.
For, as a matter of practical fact, we shall
find no outward evidence of our work. The
[194]
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
meat of the five hundred cherries which we have
crossed, we can safely assume, will taste the same,
and be the same, as though we had let the bees
attend to pollenation; the cherries that result will
be no different in flavor or appearance than the
other cherries on the tree.
But inside the stony seed of each of those
cherries we shall find an indelible living record
of what we have done.
So, disregarding the fruit, we save our five
hundred cherry seeds and plant them in a shallow
box until they have sprouted and then transplant
them till they attain a six or eight inch growth.
*****
So far, let us see how we have shortened
nature's processes.
In the first place, we have brought together a
large, insipid cherry and a homely, small, sweet
one, brought them from points, perhaps, two
thousand miles apart.
In the natural course, those two cherries would
have spread; they would, eventually, have come
together, no doubt; but we have brought them
together without delay. Perhaps, in this, we have
saved a thousand years.
In bringing our two kinds of cherries together
we have brought not only one of each type, but
dozens, or hundreds, each selected for its size,
[195]
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ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
or appearance, or some probable quality which
it contains within. In this simple selection of
individuals we may have saved other thousands
of years.
With unerring accuracy we have seen that the
pollen of the two kinds has been interchanged, so
that the five hundred or so resulting seeds wrill
represent the two heredities we wish to mix — and
only these.
Who can estimate how long it might have
taken the bees and the winds, working even in
neighboring trees, to effect specific crosses with
the certainty which we have assured?
Now, with new heredities bundled up in our
five hundred cherry stones, we plant them under
every favoring condition in our shallow box, and
unless mishap or accident intervenes, we get new
cherry trees from all, or, at worst, lose but a few.
From five hundred other cherries on a tree,
leaving the birds to distribute the seed, how many
seedlings will there sprout?
*****
And now, with our sprouted cherry seedlings
six inches or eight in height, with no man knows
how many thousand years of nature's processes
cut out, we come to the most important short-cut
of all — quick fruiting, so that there may be quick
selection.
[197]
LUTHER BURBANK
Grafting is no new practice.
Virgil wrote verses about it:
But thou shalt lend
Grafts of rude arbute unto the walnut tree,
Shalt bid the unfruitful plane sound apples bear,
Chestnuts the beech, the ash blow white with the
pear,
And, under the elm, the sow on acorns fare.
Pliny, within the same century, describes a cleft
graft and bespeaks the following precautions:
that the stock must be that of a tree suitable for
the purpose; that the cleft must be taken from
one that is proper for grafting; that the incision
must not be made in a knot; that the graft must
be from a tree which is a good bearer, and
from a young shoot; that the graft must not be
sharpened or pointed while the wind is blowing;
that the graft should be inserted during the moon's
increase; with the final warning, "A graft should
not be used that is too full of sap, no, by Hercules !
no more than one that is dry and parched."
*****
"Graft close down to the trunk," the later
theory of grafting has been, "there the sap
pressure is highest and the grafted cion has the
best opportunity to live.
"Graft away out at the tip ends of the tree,"
thought Luther Burbank, "and you will save from
two to seven years of time."
[198] '
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
It was the same kind of observation as that
which led to the production of a spineless cactus;
the same keen eye for cause and effect which
showed Luther Burbank a new theory of grafting
— which opened the way to a practice which
makes possible, comparatively, immediate results.
*****
Grafting close to the trunk gives the cion a
better chance.
"Give anything a good chance," thought Mr.
Burbank, "and it takes its own time to mature.
"Take away that chance, and responding to
the inborn tendency of every living thing to
reproduce itself, it will hasten the process without
waiting to accumulate strength. Therefore, if we
graft away out at the tip ends of the tree, while
we make it harder for the cions to exist, yet, in
consequence, they will bear us quicker fruit.
"Furthermore, if we graft close to the trunk
we can, at best, attach but six, or eight, or a
dozen cions.
"But if we graft out at the tip ends, we can put
five hundred cions on a single tree."
*****
Grafting was nothing new; but it remained for
Luther Burbank to learn the secret of producing,
by means of it, five hundred different kinds of
fruit on a single tree at the same time, so that a
[199]
LUTHER BURBANK
comparative test might be made. It remained for
Luther Burbank, with his theory of starving a
living thing to make it hasten its reproduction, to
cut from two to seven years out of the long wait
for the fruit which is to tell the story of the
heredities which were confined within the seed.
It is possible, at this point, to give but the
barest glimpse of the results which Mr. Burbank's
improvements in grafting have made possible.
Under the proper heading the details of method
will be fully explained, together with a summary
of the results of hundreds of thousands of grafts,
showing that, while the average time of fruiting
has been brought down to less than two seasons,
in some exceptional cases Mr. Burbank has
secured fruit for testing the same season that the
graft was made.
Here, too, it is not possible to convey more
than a general idea of his plans which, in every
operation, are aimed toward the end of producing
the quickest possible test. Whether it be the
quince seedlings bearing fruit in six months; or
three-foot chestnut trees loaded down with nuts;
or twelve year old walnut trees, the size of their
seventy year old cousins — all through this work
the plan and the method is to save time for the
individual plant as well as to provide short-cuts
for the process of evolution.
[200]
An Apple Graft One Year Old
As evidence of the success of Mr. Burbank's methods
of producing quick results, the apple graft, in full bearing, after only
one year's growth, speaks eloquently.
LUTHER BURBANK
To go back to our cherry seedling, now six
inches above the ground, if we were to depend
on nature's processes, by careful planting and
cultivation we might produce cherries in seven
years; but by short-cutting through grafting, and
short-cutting grafting itself through Mr. Burbank's
plan, we shall have our cherry crosses in 1914
instead of in 1920— five hundred of them all on
a single tree, so that they can be plucked and
laid out, first, for a visual selection, to pick out
the ones which conform to our ideas of color,
and size, and beauty; and, second, for selection
through taste — to find the one, or the two, or the
dozen among them which come nearest the ideal
of our original mental blue print.
Perhaps of the five hundred cherries spread
before us, none may fit the blue print; or perhaps
one or two, approximating it, may show signs of
further improvements which ought to be made.
Eliminate the rest, and start afresh with
those two — begin at the very beginning with them
again — mix up their heredities with other
desirable heredities from near or far, grow seed-
lings, produce quick fruit through grafting, and
select again.
*****
Every little bit Mr. Burbank has, as the neigh-
bors choose to call it, a $10,000 bonfire.
[202]
A Chestnut Graft One Year Old
One year before this picture was taken the heavily laden
branch of chestnuts seen above was a seedling with its possibilities
unknown. In the brief span of twelve months Mr. Burbank
has now before him the chestnuts which are to
be the proof of the success or failure
of his experiment.
A Burbank Bonfire
The photograph print here is remarkable in that it is made
from a color photograph taken at night of one of Mr. Burbank s
so-called $10,000 bonfires. Such a photograph in even black
and white would be extremely difficult of accomplishment.
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION
In such a bonfire there would be 499 cherry
grafts out of the five hundred which we have just
made; there would be 19.999 rose bushes which
had been brought to bearing in order to find the
twenty thousandth which was not burned — or
perhaps twenty thousand rose bushes, the one
sought for not having been worth the saving;
there would be 1,500 gladiolus bulbs with an easy
market value of a dollar a piece, put in the fire
after the one, or the two, or the dozen best among
them had been selected; there would be a
thousand cactus seedlings, representing three
years of care and watchfulness, but useless now,
their duty done. A ten thousand dollar bonfire,
indeed, without exaggeration.
The builder of bridges can sell the lumber used
in his false construction for seconds; and so,
too, could Mr. Burbank profitably dispose of the
elements of false construction in his work — those
millions of seeds and bulbs and cuttings which
represent second bests or poorer; but he does
not; every step in the process excepting those
concerning the final result is obliterated with a
ruthless hand.
"It is better," says Mr. Burbank, "to run the
risk of losing a perfected product, through the
destruction of the elements which went into it,
than to issue forth to the world a lot of second
[205]
LUTHER BURBANK
bests which have within them the power of self
perpetuation and multiplication, and which, if we
do not destroy them now, will clutter the earth
with inferiority or with mediocrity."
So, we see that, while nature eventually would
produce the things which we hurry her to produce,
yet the improvements would find themselves in
competition with the failures which they cost, the
failures outnumbering the improvements, perhaps,
a million to one. We see that we not only shorten
the process, not only achieve a result out of every
forty failures instead of every million, but we give
our product the advantage of a better chance to
live — we remove from it the necessity of fighting
its inferiors for the food, and air, and sunlight
which give it life.
*****
This, then, is the story of the making of a new
cherry to fit an ideal:
First, selection of the elements; second, com-
bining these elements; third, bringing these com-
binations to quick bearing; fourth, selecting one
out of the five hundred; and then, selection, on
and on.
Interesting and wonderful as the process of
pollenation is, ingenious and successful as Mr.
Burbank's method of grafting is, important and
highly perfected as his methods of growing and
[206]
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One of Mr. Burbank's Records
This page from one of Mr. Burbank's record books gives
an indication of the careful, painstaking manner in which he
has recorded all of his experiments. With seeds, bulbs and slips
coming to him continually from all over the world; and with
more than forty years of work recorded, these books
form now a large and interesting library.
LUTHER BURBANK
caring for seedlings are — these, after all, are but
details in the process — minor details, in fact.
The big element, over-towering them in im-
portance, is selection.
First, the selection of an ideal, then the
selection of the elements which are to be blended
to achieve it, then the selection of the resultant
plant, and after that the selection of better and
better individual plants to bear the fruit which
reproduces the original selected ideal.
*****
Everything we do, then, is simply done to
facilitate selection.
We produce new plants in enormous quan-
tities, in order that there may be many from which
to select; and having selected, we destroy nine
hundred and ninety-nine one thousandths of our
work.
We strive all the while to produce quick
results — to eliminate the long waits and to shorten
those that we can not wholly eliminate — simply so
that our selection may be truly comparative — as
that of five hundred fruits tasted in a single after-
noon, and so that lingering expectancy may not
prejudice our judgment, or the result.
*****
It took two thousand years to bring about the
juicy American pear by unconscious selection —
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LUTHER BURBANK
and two thousand years for the Orientals to
produce the pear they liked.
Yet, as plant improvement goes, the pear
was quick to respond to its environment; other
fruit improvements wrought through unconscious
selection have taken ten times as long.
On the other hand we see Luther Burbank's
cherry tree, bearing more than five hundred dif-
ferent kinds of cherries at the same time, cherries
produced to compare with a mental blue print
less than three years old — cherries, from among
which, one, at least, will be found, which will
lead the way to the achievement of the ideal.
And, similarly, in every department of plant
life, whether it be in farm plants, or garden
plants, or forest plants, or lawn plants, or orchard
plants, or whether it be in plants which we grow
for their chemical content, or for their fibers, or
what — we shall find that it is possible to devise
short-cuts into the centuries to come, and through
combining stored up heredity with new environ-
ment, to hurry evolution to produce for us entirely
new plants to meet our specific desires.
— Who shall say that progress, any
progress, is not worth all it costs?
How Far Can Plant
Improvement Go?
The Crossroads — Where Fact
and Theory Seem to Part
WHEN I first began this work," said
Mr. Burbank, "I was taught that a
combination between two varieties of
the same species was possible — that I might cross
one plum with another plum, for example, to get
a new variety — but that the species marked the
definite boundary within which I might work.
The science of that day was firm in its belief that
a seed-bearing, self-reproductive cross between
plants of different species was beyond the pale of
possibility.
"A little later on, when I succeeded in com-
bining the plum with the apricot, and produced,
thereby, a new fruit whose parents were of
undeniably different species, the law, or rule, was
moved up a peg; and I was told that while it
might be possible to effect combinations between
different species, yet that must be the limit of
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ON FACT VS. THEORY
accomplishment; that combinations between the
next higher divisions, genera, were beyond the
power of man to effect.
"Then, when I was able, after a time, to take
parents of two different genera, like the crinum
and the amaryllis, or the peach and the almond, or
a score of others which might be mentioned, and
to effect successful seed-producing combinations
between them, I began to hear less and less about
laws and rules.
"The fact is that the laws and the rules are all
man-made.
"Nature, herself, has no hard and fast mode of
procedure. She limits herself to no grooves. She
travels to no set schedule.
She proceeds an inch at a time — or a league —
moving forward, always, but into an unmapped,
uncharted, trackless future.
"I like to think of Nature's processes as end-
lessly flowing streams; streams in which varied
strains of heredity are ever pouring down through
river beds of environment; streams which, for
ages, may keep to their channels, but each of
which is apt, at any time, to jump its banks and
find a different outlet.
"Just about the time we decide that one of
these streams is fixed and permanent, there is
likely to come along a freshet of old heredity, or
[2131
The Amaryllis and Its Parents
Having effected a combination between species, Mr. Burbank,
the amaryllis, made a combination between genera. In this
direct color photograph print the improved amaryllis and
its tiny parents are shown in truthful proportion.
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ON FACT VS. THEORY
a shift in new environment; after which we must
rebuild our bridges and revise all our maps."
*****
Since the subject of classification is an impor-
tant one; and since Mr. Burbank upsets some
man-made law or theory on an average of about
once in every sixty days, it may be well, at this
point, to take a bird's-eye glimpse over the maps
and charts which have been worked out.
With a subject in which the bulk of truth is
masked in the obscurity of past ages, and with
many men of many minds attacking it from many
viewpoints, it is only to be expected that there
should be differences of opinion.
But, for the sake of making the explanation
clear, we may, for the moment, overlook minor
divergences and view, only, the main backbone
plan which meets with the broadest acceptance.
To begin at the beginning, we see, first,
spread before us, three kingdoms, whose boundary
lines are well surveyed, and whose extent is
all-inclusive. These, as our Duffy's second reader
told us, are the mineral, the animal, and the
vegetable kingdoms.
Our interest lies now in the vegetable kingdom,
which divides itself into six (perhaps seven)
branches, or subkingdoms, called phyla.
The lowest of these subkingdoms includes
[217]
LUTHER BURBANK
only those vegetables of the simplest type which
reproduce by splitting themselves in two. In
this subkingdom live the death-dealing bacteria,
which bring about such human diseases as tuber-
culosis and malaria, or such plant diseases as
black rot; and the good bacteria, too, which are
everywhere, helping us to digest our food, and
without whose help the higher subkingdoms of
plant life could not exist; and other plants of the
same grade.
The next subkingdom, higher by a step, includes
the yeast which we use to raise our bread, or those
microscopic vegetables which turn hop juice into
beer, apple juice into cider and rye juice into
whisky; and others. Those who prefer to chart
seven subkingdoms instead of six, divide this
branch into two, making the slime-molds a
separate phylum.
The next subkingdom, ascending the scale,
includes, among others, the mosses and liverworts.
From these it is but a step to the next sub-
kingdom, which includes the ferns — the highest
type of flowerless plants, and the first, in the
ascending scale, to exhibit a complete development
of root, stem and leaf.
The final subkingdom, and the one into which
our work principally takes us, embraces those
plants which produce seeds.
[218]
ON FACT VS. THEORY
Taking, then, this latter, the highest sub-
kingdom, we find that it separates into two broad
divisions, called classes, one of which is distin-
guished by bearing its seeds in enclosed packages
called ovaries; the other bearing seeds which are
exposed, or naked. The first of these classes
includes the vast majority of seed-bearing plants;
the other including principally those trees, like
the pine and the cypress, which bear their seeds
in open cones.
Next, on our chart, we shall find that the class
is subdivided into orders. The order represents
a collection of related families. As an example,
the order Rosales is made up of the rose family,
the bean family, the cassia family, the mimosa
family and twelve other families closely allied.
Below the order comes the family — a division
which is still broadly inclusive; the rose family
for example taking in not only the rose, itself,
but the apple, the blackberry and sixty-two other
plants whose close relationship might not at first
be evident.
From the family we next narrow down to the
genus — which separates the rose from the apple
and the blackberry and gives each its own classi-
fication.
Beneath the genus there comes the species.
And beneath the species the variety.
[219]
LUTHER BURBANK
We may take it as a safe observation that the
simpler the form of life, the less the tendency
toward variation; the more complex, the greater
the opportunity for individual differences.
So, in the simpler subkingdoms, and in the
more general divisions down to and including the
order, the lines of division are more readily
differentiated, and the work of classification has
been fairly free from quarrels.
But as the order breaks up into families, and
the family breaks up into genera, and the genus
breaks up into species, and the species breaks up
into varieties, and variations tend more and more
to carry the individual away from its kind, there
are to be found dissentions and differences of
opinion which could hardly be chronicled in
twelve full volumes of this size.
*****
Nor is this divergent opinion surprising.
It is said that, of an iceberg floating in the sea,
but one-eighth is visible to the surface observer,
while seven-eighths of the mass are submerged
beneath the water line.
Who, from looking at the one-eighth in view,
could be expected to draw an accurate detail
picture of the iceberg as a whole?
The vegetable kingdom which presents itself
to our vision today has been under observation,
[220]
ON FACT VS. THEORY
at most, but a few hundred years. It has behind
it, who shall say, how many tens of thousands of
generations of ancestry which, coming before
man, went by unobserved — yet which, under new
environment, are continually bursting forth to
confuse us.
How can man, with only one ten-thousandth
of his subject revealed to him, be expected to make
charts or maps which shall withstand onslaught,
or be superior to criticism?
*****
For the sake of ready understanding, we may,
however, summarize plant life into the broad
classifications outlined above.
First, the vegetable kingdom, which includes
all plants.
Second, the subkingdom or phyla, six or seven
in number.
Third, the class, which ranks above an order
and below a phylum.
Fourth, the order, which ranks between the
class and the family.
Fifth, the family, which ranks below an order
but above the genus.
Sixth, the genus, which ranks below a family
but above the species.
Seventh, the species, which ranks below a
genus and above the variety.
[221]
LUTHER BURBANK
Eighth, the variety, which ranks below a species
and above the individual.
Yet with but one certainty in the entire scheme
of classification — that certainty being the indi-
vidual, itself.
Men may tell us that a plant belongs to one
genus or to another, that it is of this species, or
of that — or that it is even of a different family
than at first we thought — but these, after all, are
but theories, built up about the plant by man —
theories which serve merely as guide posts in our
work.
The plant itself, the individual plant, if we but
watch it and give it an opportunity to show, will
tell us for itself, beyond dispute or denial, just
what manner of plant it is — just what we may
hope for it to do.
*****
Next in importance to classifying plants, from
a superficial standpoint, is a method of naming
them.
When we go to the florist's we ask for roses,
or marigolds; when we go to the fruiterer's we
talk to him of oranges, and plums, and cherries;
when we go to the green grocer we ask for lettuce,
or cabbage, or peas; when we select furniture we
talk of it as being made of mahogany, or oak, or
walnut.
[222]
ON FACT VS. THEORY
Thus, commonly, we call all forms of plant
life by their nicknames — and by their nicknames
only do most of us know them.
One reason, likely enough, is that the scientific
names of plants are in Latin — for the good reason
that the Russian, or Swedish, or Spanish, or
American scientist is able to describe his work,
thus, in a common language.
In giving a plant its Latin name, no attention
is paid to its class, order or family.
The name of the genus becomes its first name.
The name of the species follows.
And the name of the variety, when given, comes
last.
Thus, in writing the scientific name for an
apricot, or a plum, or a cherry, we should give
first the name of the genus, which, for all of these,
is Primus.
If we are to describe, for instance, a cherry of
the species Avium, we should write, following the
name of the genus, the name of the species, as
Prunus Avium.
And then, if we were to write the name of some
particular improvement in that species of cherry
which Mr. Burbank had wrought, say the famous
Burbank cherry, we should follow the names of
the genus and the species with the name of that
variety, as Prunus Avium Burbank.
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ON FACT VS. THEORY
. Or, if we were to prepare a technical article,
about this species, we should write Primus Avium
at the first mention of it, and contract it to P.
Avium when mentioning it thereafter.
In this work, in order to gain clearness with
the least effort, and to avoid confusion through
the use of disputed terms, it has been decided, so
far as possible, to call plants by their commonest
names; going, wherever necessary, into a brief
explanation in order to identify the plant clearly
in the mind of the reader.
Our work is to be a practical work, and the
effort which it would cost to master thousands
of Latin names might, it is believed, be better
expended in a study of the principles and the
practice.
There arises, unfortunately, a confusion
through use of common names. The California
poppy, for example, is not a poppy at all; but for
the purposes of this work it has been deemed best
to call it the California poppy, by which name it
is generally known, rather than to refer to it as
Eschscholtzia; and so on throughout the list of
other plants.
No common name is used, however, which is
not to be found in the dictionary; so that those
whose scientific interest is uppermost have but to
refer to their Webster, which gives a greater
[225]
LUTHER BURBANK
wealth of detail than could be hoped for in a
glossary or an appendix to these volumes.
*****
"A few years after I came to Santa Rosa," said
Mr. Burbank as he was sitting on his porch one
evening, "I was invited to hear a new minister
preach on a subject which, I was assured, would
be of interest to me.
"It was not my own church, so I tried to find
my way to an unobtrusive seat in the rear, where
I should disturb no one. But, as if by prearrange-
ment, the usher would not have it that way — I was
led to the front center, where I was given a pew to
myself.
"As soon as the sermon began, I saw the reason
for it all. That preacher, with a zeal in his heart
worthy of a better cause, had evidently planned
a sermon for my own particular benefit. He was
determined to show me the error of my ways.
"He began by describing 'God's complete
arrangements' as evidenced in the plants about
us, and rebuked me openly for trying to improve
on the creations of Omnipotence. He held me to
ridicule as one who believed he could improve
perfection; he predicted dire punishment for
attempting to thwart Nature and tried to persuade
me, before that audience, to leave God's plants
alone.
[226]
The Primus Berry
A production of Mr. Burbank's which shows how,
by crossing plants out of kind, we are helping them to start
species which will be free from inherited disadvantages,
and bear us, bountifully, better crops.
LUTHER BURBANK
"Poor man ! Whatever may have been thought
of his good taste, or his tact, or his judgment, I
could hardly take offense at his sentiments — for
they really reflected the thought of that day.
"Poor man! He could not see that our plants
are what they are because they have grown up
with the birds, and the bees, and the winds to help
them; and that now, after all these centuries of
uphill struggle, man has been given to them as
a partner to free them from weakness and open
new doors of opportunity.
"He could not see that all of us, the birds, and
the bees, and the flowers, and we, ourselves, are
a part of the same onward-moving procession,
each helping the other to better things; nor could
many of the others of his time see that.
"And the botanists of that day, less than four
short decades ago, found their chief work in the
study and classification of dried and shriveled
plant mummies, whose souls had fled — rather than
in the living, breathing forms, anxious to reveal
their life histories.
"They counted the stamens of a dried flower
without looking at the causes for those stamens;
they measured and surveyed the length and
breadth of truth with never a thought of its
depth — they charted its surface, as if never
realizing that it was a thing of three dimensions.
[228]
ON FACT VS. THEORY
"And that is why those who had devoted their
lifetimes to counting stamens and classifying
shapes told me, through their writings, that a cross
might be made within species, but never between
species; that is why when I did make a cross
between species they looked no further into the
truth, but simply moved up a notch, and said,
'Very well, but you cannot make a cross between
genera'; that is why, when I did that very thing,
not once, but scores of times, that type of scientist
lost interest in rule making and went back to
stamen counting."
*****
To realize the point more clearly, let us observe
for a moment the common tomato — which belongs
to that large division of plants, the nightshade
family.
Just as the rose family includes not only the
rose, but the apple and the blackberry and
sixty-two other plants, so the nightshade family
includes seventy-five genera and more than
eighteen hundred species.
The classification is built around structural
facts, such as that plants of this family originally
had alternate leaves with five stamens and a two-
celled ovary, or egg chamber, each cell containing
many eggs.
These structural similarities in the plants of
[229]
Improved Tigridias
This South American plant with which Mr. Burbank has
experimented now bears blossoms six or seven inches in diameter, of
wonderful formation and color and with striking tiger spots
which add to the weird beauty of the flower.
ON FACT VS. THEORY
this family trace back to a common parentage and
fully justify the classification of these seventy-five
genera in a single family.
If we were to look not at the structure,
however, but at the seventy-five plants themselves,
then, and only then, could we fully realize the
wonders which environment, toying with that
common heredity within the plant, has wrought.
We should see, among the seventy-five brothers
and sisters of that family if they were spread
before us, the poisonous bitter-sweet, and the
humble but indispensable potato; the egg plant
and the Jerusalem cherry; the horse nettle and the
jimson weed; the tobacco plant and the beautiful
petunia; and the tomato itself.
We should see seventy-five plants with original
structural similarities, yet differing, in every other
way, as night differs from day; and we should be
able to trace, if we observed closely enough, the
points at which, in the history of this family, hew
environment, oft repeated, has hardened into
heredity, subject to the call of still newer environ-
ment, which has not been lacking to bring it out;
we should be able to trace out, by easy stages,
why one branch ran to the poisonous bitter-sweet,
another to the potato with its food product below
the ground, another to the tomato with its
tempting fruit displayed on vines above; another
[231]
LUTHER BURBANK
to tobacco, valued for its chemical content — and
so on throughout all of the variations.
The tomato, we should see, was the last of the
family to fall into a violent change of environment.
A tropical plant, bearing fruits about the size
of a hickory nut and not believed to be edible,
the tomato found its way into the United States
within the past century.
At first, the tomato plant was prized merely
as an ornament; it was grown as we now grow
rose bushes, and the fruit was looked upon
as a mantel decoration, until, by accident, it was
discovered to be edible. There are, in fact, many
such ornamentals today which might bear us
edible fruit. One, in particular, the passion
flower, which Mr. Burbank is developing, will form
the subject of an interesting description later on.
Following the discovery that the tomato was
edible came the same course of unconscious selec-
tion that falls to the lot of every useful plant. The
biggest tomatoes were saved, the better tomatoes
were cultivated.
In the environment of the tropics, the tomato
fruit of hickory nut size was ideal; it cost less
effort to produce than a larger tomato; it contained
sufficient seeds to insure reproduction.
But with the advent of man into its environ-
ment, its seed chambers increased in number, the
[232]
Variable Potato Seedlings
While the tomato has been so thoroughly fixed in a few
decades that many varieties reproduce true to seed, its cousin,
the potato, as explained in Chapter II, runs into wonderful variations
when its seed is planted. The potato seedlings pictured
here are some which were grown from the seed in
the potato seed balls shown on page 57.
LUTHER BURBANK
meat surrounding the seeds increased in quantity
and improved in quality; so that in virtually half
a century the large, luscious, juicy tomato we now
know is universally to be found in our markets,
in season and out.
No man can say how many thousands or tens
of thousands of years it took wild environment to
separate the tomato from the seventy-four others
of its family. Yet, in less than half a century, see
what changes man, as an element of environment,
has worked!
We take the seeds of our Ponderosa tomatoes
and set them out in a can or a shallow box, and
midsummer brings us new Ponderosas — so well
have we succeeded in fixing the traits we desire.
But were we to take those same seeds to the
tropics and plant them under the conditions of
only fifty years ago an entirely different thing
would happen.
The first generation would be Ponderosas, more
or less like those we grow here.
But in the second generation, or, at latest, the
third, the seeds of those very Ponderosas, when
planted, would grow into vines which bear the
old type of tomato — the size of a hickory nut— an
immediate response, almost, to the wild tropical
environment which prevailed before man came
along.
[234]
ON FACT VS. THEORY
From the botanists of only a century ago,
examining only dead tomato blossoms from the
tropics, and dried tomato fruits the size of hickory
nuts — how could we expect an inkling, even, of
what the tomato with less than half a century of
cultivation could become?
How short, indeed, the time which environment
requires to transform a plant beyond recognition
— especially when man, either consciously or un-
consciously, becomes a part of that environment!
And, knowing what the Chinese did to the pear,
what the American Indian did to corn, what our
own fathers and mothers did to the tomato, can
we not see that, while stamen counting has its
place, yet, for real achievements in plant improve-
ment, we must look for help not so much to the
stamen counters as to the plants themselves as new
environment brings their old heredities into view.
*****
Mr. Burbank has made combinations between
species; he has made combinations between
genera, not once, but many times; fertile, seed-
bearing combinations.
How far, then, can plant combination be
carried? Is it possible to go above the genus and
make combinations between families? Or to go
above the family and make combinations between
the orders? Or to go above the orders and make
[235]
Some Blackberry Canes
It is possible, from the appearance of the cane of the
blackberry, at certain stages, to predict the color of the fruit
which is later to be borne. The application of this short-cut is fully
explained under a later heading. The picture above
shows a range of variation produced by crossing.
ON FACT VS. THEORY
combinations between the classes? Or to go above
the classes and make combinations between the
subkingdoms?
"Give us time," says Mr. Burbank, "and we
could accomplish anything.
"The limitations of our work are not limitations
imposed by Nature; they are limitations imposed,
alone, by the clock and the calendar.
"Here we are, fighting ten thousand years of
hardened heredity with five or ten years of new
environment; sometimes we succeed; it is no
wonder that more often we fail; in five years,
however, we can usually work a transformation;
if we could afford to spend fifty years on a single
plant, we could upset every rule that has ever been
formulated about that plant; and if we could
spend five thousand years, we could, simply by
guiding Nature, accomplish, well, anything.
"Every season we are working changes which
Nature would take ages to work ; but from a
practical standpoint we must seek always to take
advantage of the old heredities which Nature has
stored up — to make them serve our ends, because
this can be done quickly; rather than to create and
fix new heredities which might take so long as to
rob our work of its usefulness."
*****
Here, then, is Mr. Burbank's bird's-eye view:
[237]
LUTHER BURBANK
Before us is a world of living, onward-march-
ing plants — plants which have made, are making,
and will continue to make, their own rules as they
go along. Here, before us, too, is the propaganda
of our subject with its maps, plans, charts, rules,
laws, theories, beliefs, built up too fixedly, too
arbitrarily, too superficially, perhaps, but very
completely, nevertheless, around this onward-
marching mass.
Let us use to the utmost all the help that science
can give; to save time, let us accept the laws and
the rules, let us have confidence in the maps and
the charts, until the plants themselves show our
error.
Let us search, always, for stored up heredities
to convert to our use, just as we would seek stored
up diamonds, or gold, or coal, instead of trying,
by chemistry, to produce them.
Let us realize, always, that everything is
possible with time; but let us seek out all the
short-cuts we can.
For, after all, we have so little of Time!
* * * * *
With time as our limiting factor, then, we shall
find, in plant work, many things which we cannot
hope to accomplish.
We shal] find plants, of course, of different
species, and different genera — a surprising num-
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LUTHER BURBANK
ber, in spite of the old belief, which will combine
readily to produce fertile offspring constituting
a new species or a new genus.
We shall find plants of different species or
genera which combine to make a sterile offspring
— a mule among plants.
And we shall find plants which can hardly be
combined at all — plants in which the pollen of one
seems to act as a definite poison on the other —
plants with large pollen grains which cannot push
their tubes down the pistils of smaller flowers —
and plants which, through long fixed heredity,
seem as averse to combination as oil seems averse
to combining with water.
"But no man," says Mr. Burbank, who has just
read this, "can tell until he has tried — tried not
once, but thousands and thousands of times."
*****
"What is that?" asked a seedsman who was
visiting Mr. Burbank.
"That is a Nicotunia," replied Mr. Burbank,
"and you are the first man in the world who has
ever seen one. It is the name which I have given
to a new race of plants produced by crossing the
large flowering nicotianas, or tobacco plants, with
petunias. It is, as you can see, a cross between two
genera of the nightshade family."
"H'm!" said the seedsman.
[240]
ON FACT VS. THEORY
"You know the secret now," said Mr. Burbank,
"but if you think that you can produce these nico-
tmiias as you would hybrid petunias, or crossbred
primroses, go ahead and try; there is no patent on
their manufacture; but if the five hundredth cross
succeeds, or even the five thousandth, under the
best conditions obtainable, you will surely be very
successful. I do not fear any immediate competi-
tion. This one cost me ten thousand tries."
Perhaps those who have said that species could
not be combined with species, or genus with genus
have tried only once or twice or a dozen times.
Perhaps Mr. Burbank's patience and persistence
account for some of the upset laws.
*****
"Why not content ourselves to work within
varieties as the bees work?" asks some one.
"Because by going out of the varieties and
combining between species, and going out of the
species and combining between genera, we mul-
tiply almost infinitely the combinations of old
heredities which we may bring into play — we
lessen the work which we have to make environ-
ment do by spreading before us more combinations
of heredity — we accomplish in two years what
otherwise might take two lifetimes."
In all, Mr. Burbank has made one hundred
and seventy-nine combinations between different
[241]
Variations in Walnuts
All of the variations pictured above were secured by crossing.
Mr. Burbank, in his walnut work, has grown nuts by the wagon load
for the purpose of finding one or two which came near his ideal.
ON FACT VS. THEORY
species and different genera, treated elsewhere,
all of which were thought to be impossible.
It was such combinations as these which en-
abled him to perfect the cactus, to produce the
plumcot, to make the Shasta daisy — in fact, it was
Luther Burbank's lack of respect for man-made
laws, when plants told him a different story, that
has given the world eighty per cent, of his produc-
tions— that has led him to ninety per cent, of his
discoveries in practical method.
"The only reason," said Mr. Burbank, "that we
do not combine between families, and between
orders, and classes, is that we haven't the time."
*****
So we see that the science of plant life is not
an exact science, like mathematics, in which two
and two always equal four. It is not a science in
which the definite answers to specific problems
can be found in the back of any book.
It is a science which involves endless experi-
menting— endless seeking after better and better
results.
Theories are good, because, if we do not permit
them to mislead us, they may save us time; laws,
and maps, and charts, and diagrams — systems of
classification and of nomenclature — all these are
good, because, if they are faulty, they still reveal
to us the viewpoint of some one who, with dili-
[243]
LUTHER BURBANK
gence, has devoted himself to a single phase, at
least, of a complex subject.
But we must remember that the theories, most
of them, are built around dead plants.
While the facts we are to use are to be gathered
from living ones.
So, every once in a while, when we come to a
crossroads where that kind of theory and this kind
of fact seem to part, let us stick to the thing which
the living plant tells us, and assume that evolution,
or improvement, or progress, or whatever we
choose to call it, has stolen another lap on the
plant historians.
And let us remember that the fact that ours is
not an exact science, with fixed answers to its
problems, is more than made up for by the
compensating fact that there seems to be no limit
to the perfection to which plant achievements may
be carried — no impassable barrier, apparently
(save time — which limits us all, in everything),
beyond which our experiments may not go.
— Nature did not make
the laws; she limits her-
self to no grooves; she
travels to no set schedule.
Some Plants Which Are
Begging for
Immediate Improvement
A Rough Survey of
the Possibilities
I HAVE finished making an analysis of a number
of your fruits," wrote a chemist to Mr. Burbank,
"and I find that pectic acid, which is so apt to
play havoc with the human digestive tract, and
which accounts for the inability of many people
to enjoy raw fruit, is almost entirely absent."
"It must be, then, that I don't like pectic acid,"
commented Mr. Burbank as he read the letter.
"It never occurred to me to give the matter of
its elimination a thought; so, the only way I can
account for the lack of it is that, as I have selected
my fruits by tasting, I have preferred those which
were low in this content."
* * * * +
It would be no small achievement to rebuild
our fruits and grains and vegetables to fit the
finnicky stomachs which sedentary occupations
[Volume I — Chapter VIII]
LUTHER BURBANK
are giving us. Yet such a transformation is one
which might be easily wrought in a few years
through simple selection, and serves, here, to
illustrate the vast range of possibilities in plant
improvement which only wait willing hands and
active minds to turn them into realization.
Immediate possibilities for plant improvement,
indeed, outnumber the improvements which have
already been wrrought, ten thousand to one.
It is planned in these books to treat of the
possibilities of each plant separately, in connection
with the description of the work which has
already been done, since each of Mr. Burbank's
improvements not only suggests countless other
improvements which he has not had the time to
take up, but indicates, in a measure, the method
by which their accomplishment may be brought
about.
It may be well, at this point, however, to
survey, roughly, the range of possibilities for
improvement, so that, as we go along, we may
have an appreciative eye for the value of the
things which are clamoring to be done.
*****
The incident of the pectic acid is but one of
many unexpected improvements which Mr. Bur-
bank has discovered in his productions after his
first object has been achieved.
[246]
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
Possibly as striking an illustration of this as
could be chosen is one which made itself evident
in the plumcot.
So intent was Mr. Burbank on his purpose of
combining two species, the plum and the apricot —
so single-minded was his idea of producing a fruit
which should reflect its double parentage in flesh
and flavor — that he lost sight of some of the
incidental possibilities of such a combination.
The cross having been made, however, he set
about to study the other new characters which the
combination showed.
Some of these were recognized as being of
little practical value.
The foliage of the plumcot tree, for example,
does not necessarily resemble the plum or the
apricot, being intermediate and representing a
perfect blend. Though, it may be noted in passing,
the foliage of a cross or hybrid often takes on the
characteristics of either one parent or the other,
or may consist of varicolored leaves, or may even
present leaves of two distinct kinds. This is an
interesting and important subject which will be
clearly illustrated with direct color photographs
later.
Finding the plumcot foliage a blend, Mr. Bur-
bank was not surprised to discover that the root
of the plumcot tree resembled in color neither the
[247]
LUTHER BURBANK
bright red of the apricot, nor the pale yellow of
the plum, but was of an intermediate shade.
Of the thousands of characteristics of the
parent species as they were subjected to examina-
tion and analysis, the most startling was found in
the surface texture of the fruit itself — one of the
most novel effects, in fact, to be seen in all Nature.
The apricot has a fine velvety skin which serves
not only as a protection to the fruit from insects
and from the sun's withering rays, but which adds
greatly to its attractive appearance.
Plums, usually, are overspread with a delicate
white or bluish bloom, powdery in form, easily
defaced by the slightest handling. This bloom
adds a touch of delicacy and beauty to the fruit,
suggests its freshness, and intensifies the attrac-
tiveness of the colors underneath.
In the early plumcots it was noticed that many
had a softer, more velvety skin than the apricot,
and that this persisted after much handling.
Then, as the characteristics began to settle, after
several generations of plumcots had appeared, it
was noticed that the new fruit not only had the
attractive velvety skin of the apricot, but that
this velvet overspread and protected a bloom like
that of the plum, giving the plumcot the plum's
delicacy of appearance, with the apricot's hardi-
ness to handling.
[248]
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LUTHER BURBANK
When this blend of bloom and velvet was
noted, experiments were made to determine how
much handling it would withstand. A dozen
plumcots were passed around from hand to hand
possibly hundreds of times, and then left to decay,
the condition of the velvet bloom being noted from
time to time.
While there was a slight decrease in the bril-
liancy of the bloom, yet it persisted to a surprising
degree even after the flesh of the plumcot had
decayed.
The accompanying color photograph prints
show clearly the difference in appearance between
the plum and the plumcot after being subjected
to handling.
The value of this characteristic is greater than
might first be estimated. Plums lose their bloom
to a great extent, even on the tree — by brushing
of leaves or chafing together. Wherever foliage
or other fruit touches it, the bloom is injured or
destroyed beyond repair. It is of course impossible
to get the plum to market without rubbing off the
greater part of the bloom and giving the fruit a
mussy appearance. In making the photographs
in these books, in fact, it has been found difficult,
first to find the fruit which has a perfect bloom on
the tree; and second, to get the plum in front of
the camera without defacing it.
[250]
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LUTHER BURBANK
Wherever a finger touches the plum a mark is
left, and since fruits, at best, must receive much
handling from the orchard to the ultimate con-
sumer, the plum is likely to lose its charm long
before its real freshness or flavor has begun to
depreciate.
With the plumcots, however, the velvety bloom
remains through growing, picking, sorting, ship-
ping, handling and sale. Which means, of course,
that the grower, the shipper, and the dealer receive
a better profit, and the consumer pays the extra
cost with cheerfulness, because appearance, after
all, is nearly as valuable a point in a fruit as size,
flavor or sweetness.
This one, unplanned, unexpected improvement
in the plumcot increases the earning capacity of
the fruit by more than $100.00 per acre over what
could be earned if plumcots had an evanescent
bloom like their parent plums.
Which is simply another evidence of the
importance, in plant improvement (and else-
where) of things which, at first, we are too apt to
regard as trifles.
It is the seeming trifles, after all, which appear
to have the greatest effect on prices and profits.
Of the two tins of asparagus shown here, one
commands more than twice the retail price of the
other, and brings considerably more than double
[252]
Both Good Asparagus
This direct color photograph print shows the advantage
of selecting asparagus for durability as well as for size and
flavor. One tin shows stalks which are whole and tempting — the
other stalks which, during the process of cooking and can-
ning, have broken and become messy. The unbroken
asparagus costs no more to raise but com-
mands twice as great a market price.
LUTHER BURBANK
the profit to the asparagus grower, simply because
of the trifle that the more costly asparagus stands
up through all the operations from the garden
to the table, while the other, broken down in
structure, presents a messy, unappetizing appear-
ance when served.
Since it costs no more to raise the higher priced
asparagus, after the expense of a few seasons of
selection has been paid for, what excuse can there
be for producing the other kind?
It would be impossible, here, to begin to
catalog the improvements which can be wrought —
improvements in the size, shape, color, texture,
juiciness, flavor, sweetness, or chemical content
of fruits; improvements in the appearance, ten-
derness, taste, cooking qualities, and nutritive
elements in vegetables; improvements in length
and strength of fiber in cotton, flax and hemp;
improvements in size, flavor, solidity, thinness of
shell of nuts; improvements in the quantity and
the quality of kernels in grains; improvements in
amount and in value of the chemical content of
sugar beets, sorghum, coffee, tea and all other
plants which are raised for their extracts; im-
provements, wonderful improvements, in the stalk
of corn, even, so that though we could make it
bear no more kernels, or no more ears, it would
still yield us a better and bigger forage crop;
[254]
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
improvements, all of them, which are capable of
turning losses into profits, and of multiplying
profits, instead of merely adding to them by single
per cents.
* * it * *
Improving the yield and, consequently, the
usefulness and profit of existing plants, however,
is but the beginning of the work before us.
An almost equally rich field lies in saving
plants from their own extravagance, thereby
increasing the 3d eld.
The fruit trees of our fathers and mothers were
shade trees in size, with all too little fruit.
The ideal orchard of today, generally speaking,
is the one which can be picked without the use of
a step ladder. Thus, already, we have taught fruit
bearing plants economy — saved them the extrava-
gance of making unnecessary wood, at the expense
of fruit, since it is their fruit, not their wood, that
we want.
The grapes of our childhood grew sparsely on
climbing vines which covered our arbors; while
the grapes grown for profit today grow thickly,
almost solidly, on stubby plants three feet or so
in height. The value of the grape plant lies in
the fruit and not in the vine.
In so many different ways can we save our
plants extravagance and increase their useful
[255]
Transforming the Gladiolus
When Mr. Burbank first began his work with the gladiolus,
its blossoms were widely separated on a long stalk. The direct
color photograph print above shows how he has brought them into a
compact mass, and how, in many cases, he has trained them
to bloom around the entire stalk instead of only on two
sides as before. Mr. Burbank also increased the
size and strength of the gladiolus stalk that
it might better withstand the winds —
all of these things in addition
to the wonderful improve-
ments he has wrought
in the flower itself.
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
products by curbing their useless ones, that it
would not be possible to list them here.
But, aside from these, and in the same category,
there are countless other new improvements to
be wrought.
The stoneless plum points the way to a new
world of fruits in which the stony or shell-like
covering of the seeds has been bred away.
The coreless apple, pear and quince, with
sheathless seeds growing compactly near the top,
out of the way — these are all within the range of
accomplishment.
Seedless raspberries, blackberries, gooseber-
ries, currants, with the energy saved reinvested
in added size or better flavor, call for some one
to bring them about. Seedless grapes we have had
for more than a century; yet by a certain cross
which Mr. Burbank will suggest in the grape
chapter, he believes that they can be doubled in
size and much improved in flavor. Seedless figs,
even, might be made, but these could be counted
no improvement; for the seeds of the fig give the
fruit its flavor.
Seedless watermelons might mean more work
than the result would repay, but navel water-
melons, with seeds arranged as in the navel orange,
would, likely enough, yield a result commensurate
with the effort required to produce them.
[257]
LUTHER BURBANK
Thornless blackberries and spineless cactus are
productions of proven worth and long standing,
which Mr. Burbank has now followed up with his
thornless raspberry — with many other thornless
plants to come. Why thorns at all, in the world
of useful plants, when useful plants no longer
need them?
Whatever plant we observe we shall see some
waste which might be eliminated, some weakness
which might be overcome, some extravagance
which might be checked — and all for the profit
of producer and consumer alike.
*****
Still another important department of plant
improvement lies in fitting plants to meet specific
conditions.
The grape growers of California, for example,
had their vineyards destroyed by a little plant
louse called the phylloxera, a pest which not only
attacks the leaves, but the roots as well, and kills
the vine. The growers found relief through
grafting new vines on resistant roots which en-
vironment had armored against this pest.
When we think of the cactus, and the sage-
brush, and the desert euphorbia — of the conditions
which, unaided, they have withstood and the
enemies which they have overcome, does it not
seem as if, with our help, we should be able to
[258]
A New Thornless Fruit
Mr. Burbank's thornless blackberry is well known, and
now, by the application of the same methods, he has produced
his first thornless raspberry. Plants which are under cultivation no
longer have need for thorns and it is possible to save them
the extravagance of producing them so that they may
have more energy to put into their useful product.
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ON THE POSSIBILITIES
produce new races of plants to withstand the boll
weevil, the codling moth and the San Jose scale;
and with complaints so broadcast, and successes
so marked and so many, does not the perfection
of disease- and pest-resisting varieties seem an
important and lucrative field?
Nor are the insects and diseases the only
enemies which plants can be taught to overcome.
Mr. Burbank has trained trees to bloom later in
the season so as to avoid the late frosts which
might nip the buds; and to bear earlier, that their
fruit may be gathered before the early frosts of
fall have come to destroy. He has encouraged
the gladiolus to thicken its stalk and to rearrange
its blossoms, so that the wind no longer ruins its
beauty.
And the prune, which must lie on the ground
till it cures, had the habit, here in California, of
ripening at about the time of the equinoctial rains
of fall. Mr. Burbank helped it to shift its bearing
season earlier so that, now, when the rains come,
the prune crop has been harvested and is safely
under cover.
In all of these enemies of plant life, the insects,
and the diseases, and the rains, and the frosts,
and the snows, and even the parching heat of
the plains, there are opportunities for the plant
improver.
[261]
LUTHER BURBANK
Yet these enemies form the least important,
perhaps, of the special conditions to which plants
may be accommodated.
The market demand, for example, is a specific
condition which well repays any effort expended
in transforming plants to meet it.
The early cherries, and the early asparagus,
and the early corn — and every fruit and food
which can be offered before the heavy season
opens, is rewarded with a fancy price which
means a fancy profit to its producer.
The early bearers, too, may be supplanted
with those still earlier, until the extra early ones
overlap the extra late ones. Mr. Burbank now
has strawberries, which, in climates where there
is no frost severe enough to prevent, bear the
year around.
Mr. Burbank's winter rhubarb, another year-
around bearer, as well as his plumcot with its
indestructible bloom, are improvements which
show what can be done in the way of meeting
market demand.
His cherries, which have retailed at $3.10 a
pound because of their lusciousness and their
earliness, give an idea of the profit of changing
the bearing periods of our plants as against taking
their output as it comes.
Beside the market demand for fresh fruits
[262]
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
and vegetables ahead of time, there is an almost
equally great demand, later on in the season, from
the canners.
The illustration of the asparagus which stands
canning as against equally good asparagus which
does not, typifies the needs of this demand. The
same truth applies to tree fruits and berries
and vegetables — to everything that undergoes the
preserving process.
Some plants are more profitable when their
bearing season is lengthened as much as possible;
some, as has been seen, when it is made earlier
or later; but Mr. Burbank faced a different con-
dition when he produced his Empson pea.
The canners wanted a very small green pea
to imitate the French one which is so much used.
Quite a little problem in chemistry was involved.
Peas half grown are two-thirds sweeter than peas
full grown, because, toward the end, their sugar
begins to go a step further and turn into starch.
With these demands in mind, Mr. Burbank planted
and selected, and planted and selected until he
had the qualities he wanted in a pea of the right
size when it was half ripe.
But still another element entered — peas for
canning should ripen all at one time and not
straggle out over a week or two. The reason
for this being that, if they ripen all at once, they
[263]
LUTHER BURBANK
may be harvested by machinery so that the cost of
handling is cut to the minimum.
Mr. Burbank took the peas which he had
selected for form, size, color, taste, content, and
productiveness; then picked them over and, out
of tens of thousands, got perhaps one or two
hundred peas which he planted separately. These,
then, he harvested by separately counting the
pods and counting the peas, until he had finally
combined in his selection not only the best of
the lot but those which ripened at the same time —
practically on the same day. Today those Burbank
Empson peas form the chief industry of a large
community.
There are countless other requirements which
can be equally well met — countless little econ-
omies which can be taught to the plants — little,
as applied to any specific plant, but tremendous
in the aggregate.
There is, for instance, Mr. Burbank's new
canning cherry which, when picked, leaves its
stone on the tree. It would seem a small thing to
one eating the cherries as he picks them off the
tree. Yet, think of the saving, as carload after
carload of these are brought to the cannery — the
saving at a time when minutes count, when help
is short, generally, and when the fruit, because
of heat, is in danger of spoiling — under these
[264]
Leaves the Stone on the Tree
This direct color photograph print shows one of Mr.
Burbank's new productions, a canning cherry which, when
picked, leaves the pit on the tree. The saving in not having to pit
the cherries at the canning factory although, at first apparently
trifling, is, in the aggregate, larger than would be supposed;
particularly in view of the fact that the canning
seasons are so short that much fruit spoils
through handling and through the delay
which handling necessitates.
LUTHER BURBANK
conditions think of the saving in not having to
pit them.
The list could be extended almost endlessly,
from thickening the skin of the plum so as to
enable it to be shipped to South Africa and back,
as Mr. Burbank has done, to the production of a
tomato, which, when placed in boiling water, will
shed its skin without peeling — which Mr. Burbank
says can be done.
Under the head of saving a plant from its own
extravagance might well come the large subject
of bringing trees to early fruiting, or of short-
ening the period from seed to maturity in shade
and lumber trees. Mr. Burbank's quick growing
walnut, and his pineapple quince and chestnut
seedlings bearing crops at six months, stand forth
as strong encouragement to those who would take
up this line.
Then, too, under the same heading of fitting
plants to meet new conditions, whole chapters
might be written on how the fig tree could be
adapted to New England; or how Minnesota might
be made one of the greatest fruit producing states,
or how almost any plant might, in time, be adapted
to any soil or any climate.
And, conversely, there is the broad subject of
adapting plants to special localities. The hop crop
of Sonoma County, California, the cabbage crop
[266]
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
near Racine, Wisconsin, the celery crop near
Kalamazoo, the canteloupe crop at Rocky Ford —
all of these bear eloquent testimony to the profit
of a specialty properly introduced.
Who can say how many who are making only
a hand-to-mouth living out of corn or wheat, sim-
ply because they are in corn or wheat countries,
could not fit some special plant to their worn out
soil?
And who, seeing that some forms of plant life
not only exist, but thrive, under the most adverse
conditions, shall say that there is any poor land,
anywhere? Is it not the fact that poor land usually
means that the plants have been poorly chosen
for it, or poorly adapted to it?
These are all problems which will be treated
in their proper places, problems which offer rich
rewards to plant improvers of determination and
patience.
*****
So far, in these opportunities for plant im-
provement, we have referred only to the better-
ment of plants now under cultivation.
When we remember that every useful plant
which now grows to serve us was once a wild
plant, and when we begin to check over the list
of those wild plants which have not yet been
improved, the possibilities are almost staggering.
[267]
A Wild Plant Improved
This direct color photograph print shows the '™ld£e™ .
England aster and the improvement which a s mg | "£™ came
selection by Mr. Burbank worked. All of our cultivated plana came
from the wild, but the possibility of imp rov ng ™ldp™£[
far from being exhausted, has, in fact, only been toucnea.
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
Not all plants, of course, are worth working
with — not all have within them heredities which
could profitably be brought forth. But as a safe
comparison, it might be stated that the propor-
tion between present useful plants and those in
the wild which can be made useful, is at least
as great or greater than the proportion between
the coal which has already been mined, and the
coal which is stored up for us in the ground.
Greater, by probably a hundred times, for while
we have depleted our coal supply, our plants have
been multiplying, not only in number, but in kind
and in form.
Moreover, from our wild plants, we may not
only get new products, but new strength, new
hardiness, new combative powers, and endless
other desirable new qualities for our tame plants.
All of these things are just as immediate as
possibilities, as transcontinental railroads were
fifty years ago. All of these things can be made to
come about with such apparent ease that future
generations will take them as a matter of course.
Yet we have not touched, so far, on the most
interesting field in plant improvement — the
production, through crossing, hybridizing and
selection, of entirely new plants to meet entirely
new demands.
Who shall produce some plant — and there are
[269]
Improving the Sunflower
Even the common sunflower has possibilities for improve-
ment as a useful plant. Sunflower seed is greatly prized by
poultry raisers for feed. But the improvements which Mr. Burbank
is working, along different lines which will be described later,
may transform this into one of the most useful of plants.
ON THE POSSIBILITIES
plenty of suggestions toward this end — which shall
utilize cheap land to give the world its supply of
wood pulp for paper making, the demand for
which has already eaten up our forests and is fast
encroaching on Canada's?
Who shall say that within twenty years there
will not be some new plant better than flax, some
plant which, unlike flax for this purpose, can be
grown in the United States, to supply us with a
fabric as cheap as cotton, but as fine as linen?
Who will be the one to produce a plant which
shall yield us rubber — a plant growing, perhaps,
on the deserts, which shall make the cost of
motor car tires seem only an insignificant item in
upkeep?
And who, on those same deserts, and growing,
perhaps, side by side, shall perfect a plant which
can be transformed into five cent alcohol for the
motors themselves?
*****
We see that the openings for plant improve-
ment broadly divide themselves into four classes.
First, improving the quality of the product of
existing plants.
Second, saving plants from their own extrava-
gance, thereby increasing their yield.
Third, fitting plants more closely to specific
conditions of soil, climate and locality.
[271]
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ON THE POSSIBILITIES
And fourth, transforming wild plants and
making entirely new ones to take care of new
wants which are growing with surprising rapidity.
* * * * *
The cost and quality of everything that we eat
and wear depend on this work of plant improve-
ment.
The beefsteak for which we are paying an
ever-increasing price represents, after all, so
many blades of grass or, perhaps, so many slabs of
cactus; while the potatoes, the lettuce and the
coffee which go with it come out of the ground
direct.
Our shirts are from cotton or flax, or from the
mulberry tree on which the silkworm feeds.
Our shoes, like our steaks, resolve themselves
into grass; while our woolen coats represent the
grass which the sheep found after the cows got
through.
The mineral kingdom supplies the least of our
needs; and the animal kingdom feeds on, and
depends on, the vegetable kingdom, after all.
*****
"Who can predict the result," asks Mr. Bur-
bank, "when the inventive genius of young
America is turned toward this, the greatest of all
fields of invention, as it is now turned toward
mechanics and electricity?"
[273]
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Piecing the Fragments
of A
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We Stop to Take
A Backward Glance
WHEN you speak of environment as an
active influence," Mr. Burbank was
asked, "do you mean the soil and the
rainfall and the climate?"
"Yes," was the reply. "I mean those; but
not only those; I mean, too, such elements of
environment as the Union Pacific Railroad.
*****
"I will explain," Mr. Burbank continued.
"Go out into the woods, almost anywhere in
the United States, and hunt up a wild plum tree,
and you will find that it bears a poor little fruit
with a great big stone.
"You see, the only purpose which the wild plum
has in surrounding its seed with a fruit is to
attract the animals so that they may carry it away
from the foot of the parent tree and plant it in
[Volume I — Chapter IX]
LUTHER BURBANK
new surroundings, for the good of the offspring
and the race. It takes very little meat, and very
little in the way of attractive appearance to
accomplish this purpose; and besides, the wild
plum has to put so much of its vitality into stone,
in order to protect the seed within it from the
sharp teeth of the same animals which carry it
away, that it has little energy left to devote to
beauty and flavor.
"Then take the same wild plum after it has
been brought under cultivation and as it grows
in the average backyard, and you will find a
transformation — less stone, more meat, better
flavor, finer aroma, more regular shape, brighter
color.
"This, however, represents but the first stage
in the progress of the plum; with all this
improvement the backyard plum still may not
be useful for any commercial purpose; because
people with plum trees in their backyards are
likely to eat the fruit off the tree, or to give it
to their neighbors, or to cook and preserve it as
soon as ripe. So, even the cultivated backyard
plum may be perfectly satisfactory for its purpose
without having those keeping qualities necessary
in a commercial fruit.
"And this is the point at which the Union
Pacific Railroad entered into its environment — at
[276]
A BACKWARD GLANCE
least into the environment of the California plum.
"The railroad became a factor in plum im-
provement by bringing millions of plum-hungry
easterners within reach — by affording quick and
economical shipping facilities where there had
been no shipping facilities at all before.
"Much as the time of transcontinental travel was
reduced, the backyard plum could not withstand
the journey. But with an eager market as an
incentive, made possible through the railroad,
people began to select plums for shipment, until
the plum graduated from its backyard environ-
ment and became the basis of a thriving industry.
The railroad, by bringing customers within reach
of those who had plums which would stand
shipment, and charging as much to ship poor
plums as good plums, encouraged selection not
only for shipping plums, but toward a better and
better quality of fruit which, without doubt, in
the absence of the market which the railroad
provided, would never have been produced.
"Thus we see three important stages in the
transformation of the plum.
"First, the wild era.
"Second, the backyard era.
"Third, the railroad era."
* * * * *
When we stop to think of it, all of the great
[277]
LUTHER BURBANK
improvements in plant life have been wrought in
the railroad era — using the railroad, figuratively,
to represent all of the invention, wealth and
progress which have accompanied it.
There are, after all, but one hundred and forty
generations between us and Adam, if the popular
notions of elapsed time are correct — but one
hundred and forty father-to-son steps between
the Garden of Eden and now — but one hundred
and forty lifetimes, all told, in which whatever
progress we have made has been accomplished.
Yet our plants go back, who knows how many
tens of thousands of generations?
It took the plum tree all of these uncounted
ages, in which it had only wild environment, to
produce the poor little fruit which we find growing
in the woods.
It took only two or three short centuries of
care and half-hearted selection to bring about the
improvement which is evidenced in the common
backyard plum.
And it took less than a generation, after the
railroads came, to work all of the real wonders
which we see in this fruit today.
The last two generations of the human race,
in fact, have accomplished more toward real
progress — have done more to make transportation
and quick communication possible — have gone
[278]
A BACKWARD GLANCE
further in invention, art, science, and general
knowledge — than the one hundred and thirty-eight
generations, which preceded them, combined.
So, up to two or three human generations ago,
the plants, with their start of tens of thousands
of generations, were abreast of or ahead of human
needs.
But human inventive genius, going ahead
hundreds or thousands of years at a jump,
bringing with it organization and specialization,
has changed all of that.
In our race across the untracked plains before
us, we have outrun our plants. That is all. And,
having outrun them, we must lend a hand to
bring them up with us if they are to meet our
requirements.
* * * * *
Shall we content ourselves with watering our
plants when they are dry; and enriching the soil
when it is worn out; shall we be satisfied merely
to be good gardeners?
Or shall we study the living forces within the
plants themselves and let them teach us how to
work real transformations?
*****
It is conceivable that a manufacturer of
machinery might become successful, or even rise
to be the foremost manufacturer in his line,
[279]
LUTHER BURBANK
without giving a moment of consideration to the
atom-structure of the iron which he works — with
never a thought of the forces which Nature has
employed in creating the substance we call iron
ore.
It is conceivable that one might become a good
cook — a master chef, even — without the slightest
reference to, or knowledge of, the structural
formation of animal cells and vegetable cells.
Or that one might succeed as a teacher of
the young — might become, even, a nation-wide
authority on molding the plastic mind of youth —
without ever being assailed by the thought that
the forbears of the nimble-minded children in his
care, ages and ages ago, may have been swinging
from tree to tree by their tails.
And so, in most occupations, it has been
contrived for us that we deal only with present-
day facts and conditions — that there is little
incentive, aside from general interest or wandering
curiosity, to try to lift the veil which obscures our
past — or to peer through the fog which keeps us
from seeing what tomorrow has in store.
In plant growing, more than in any of the
world's other industries, does the scheme of
evolution and a working knowledge of Nature's
methods cease to be a theory — of far-away
importance and of no immediate interest — and
[280]
Snow-on-the-Mountain
This odd plant is shown here to illustrate the necessity
of studying not merely the form of a plant but the forces
within it It receives its name because when it blooms its leaves
begin to turn white. The purpose of this, Mr. Burbank says, is to
help guide the insects to the blossom in order to insure reproduction.
It will be noted that the leaves which do not lead to blossoms remain
green while those which surround the blossoms form brilliantly
illumined pathways for the insects. Few plants give outward evi-
dences of their processes so clearly as this — but the forces
of heredity and environment are there — none the less
—and it is these forces which we must study
if ive are to help plants to improvement.
LUTHER BURBANK
become an actual working factor, a necessary
tool, without which it is impossible to do the
day's work.
Whether plant improvement be taken up as a
science, or as a profession, or as a busines$ — or
whether it be considered merely a thing of general
interest, an idle hour recreation — there is ever
present the need to understand Nature's methods
and her forces in order to be able to make use of
them — to guide them — there always stares us in
the face that solitary' question:
"Where— and how— did life start?"
*****
We have seen in this volume a color photograph
of corn as it grew four thousand years, perhaps,
before the days of Adam and Eve.
It took less than eight seasons to carry this
plant backward those ten thousand years.
How this plant was first taken back to the
stage in which it was found by the American
Indians, thus revealing the methods which they
crudely used to improve it — and how it was taken
back and back and back beyond the Pharaohs and
then back forty centuries before the time of man —
how we know these things to be true — and how, as
a result of these experiments we are about to
see it carried forward by several centuries — all of
these things are reserved for a later chapter where
[282]
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LUTHER BURBANK
space will permit the treatment which the subject
deserves.
The illustration is cited here merely as one of
thousands, typical of plant improvement, in which,
in order to work forward a little, we must work
backward ages and ages.
It is cited here to show that what is merely an
interesting theory to the mass of the world's
workers, becomes a definite, practical, working
necessity to the man or woman who becomes
interested in plant improvement.
It is cited here so that we may be helped to get
a clearer mind picture of Mr. Burbank's viewpoint
— of that viewpoint which, after all, has enabled
him to become a leader in a new line, the founder
of a new art — instead of remaining a nurseryman
or gardener.
*****
"In my viewpoint," says Mr. Burbank, "there
is little that is new — little that has not been
discovered by others — little that has not been
accepted by scientists generally — little that re-
quires explanation to those who simply see the
same things that I have seen.
"I have no new theory of evolution to offer —
perhaps only a few details to add to the theories
which have already been worked out by men of
science.
[284]
A BACKWARD GLANCE
"And I make these observations and conclusions
of mine a part of this work for two reasons :
"First, because they are products not of
imagination, reasoning, or any mental process —
but the practical observations and conclusions
which have gained force and proof, year by
year, in a lifetime of experience with plants —
throughout forty years of continuous devotion to
the subject, during which time I have tried more
than one hundred thousand separate experiments
on plant life; and, as such, represent an important
phase of my work.
"Second, because an ever-present interest in
evolution — an ever-eager mind to peer backward
and forward — is essential not only to the practice
of plant improvement, but even to the barest
understanding of it."
*****
To gain the first quick glimpse, let us liken the
process of evolution to a moving picture as it is
thrown on the screen.
Imagine for example that some all-seeing
camera had made a snapshot of Nature's progress
each hundred years from the time when plant life
started in our world to the present day.
Imagine that these progressive snapshots were
joined together in a motion picture reel, and
thrown in quick succession upon a screen.
[285]
LUTHER BURBANK
We should see, no doubt, as the picture began
to move, a tiny living being, a simple cell, the
chemical product, perhaps, of salty water — so
small that 900 of them would have to be assembled
together to make a speck big enough for our
human eyes to see.
As snapshot succeeded snapshot we should
see that two of these microscopic simple cells
in some way or other formed a partnership —
possibly finding it easier to fight the elements of
destruction in alliance than alone.
We should see, beyond doubt, that these
partnerships joined other partnerships, and as
partnership joined partnership, and group joined
group, these amalgamations began to have an
object beyond mere defense — that they began to
organize for their own improvement, comfort, well
being, or whatever was their guiding object.
We should see that, whereas each simple cell
had within it all of the powers necessary to move
about and live its life in its own crude way, yet
with the amalgamation of the cells there came
organization, development, improvement.
Some of the cells in each amalgamation, let us
say, specialized on seeing, some on locomotion,
some on digestion.
Thus, while each simple cell had all of these
powers in a limited way, yet the new creature,
[286]
A BACKWARD GLANCE
as a result of specialization, could see better, move
more readily, digest more easily, than the separate
elements which went into it.
And so, through the early pictures of our reel,
there would be spread before us the development
of the little simple cell into more and more
complex forms of life — first vegetable, then animal
— into everything, finally, that lives and grows
about us today — into us, ourselves.
* * * * *
In an actual motion picture as it is thrown
on the screen, it is only the quick progressive
succession of the pictures that makes us realize
the sense of motion.
If we were to detach and examine a single film
from the reel, it would show no movement. It
would be as stationary and as fixed as a child's
first kodak snapshot.
In the motion picture of Nature's evolution,
the world, as we see it about us in our lifetime,
represents but a single snapshot, detached from
those which have preceded it and from those
which are to succeed it.
And so, some of us — too many of us — not
confronted with the same necessity which irre-
sistibly leads the plant student into the study of
these forces — viewing only the single, apparently
unmoving picture before us, have concluded that
[287]
LUTHER BURBANK
there is no forward motion — that there has been
no evolution — that there will be none.
The plant student, above all others, has the
greatest facilities at his hand for observing not
only the details of the picture which is now on the
screen — but for gaining glimpses — fragmentary
glimpses — of pictures which have preceded — of
piecing these together — and of realizing that all
that we have and are and will be must be a part
of this slow, sure, forward-moving change that
unfailingly traces itself back to the little simple
salt-water cell.
As we go further and further into the work
we shall begin to see the film fragments which to
workers in other lines are obscured, unnoticed,
unknown.
We shall be able to observe details of the
process — carried home to us with undeniable
conviction — indisputable to any man who believes
what he actually sees — which will give us a
realistic view of the whole motion picture which
to the world at large has always been denied.
We shall find that, dealing, thus, with Nature's
forces at first hand, our work will inspire an
interest beyond even the interest of creating new
forms of life.
And, as our work unfolds, the side lights which
we shall see will clear up many or most of the
[288]
A BACKWARD GLANCE
doubts which are likely to take possession of us
at the outset.
*****
It may be well, at this point, however, to
take space to refer to the single question most
frequently asked by thousands of intelligent men
and women who have visited Mr. Burbank's
experiment farms.
This question, differing in form, as the indi-
vidualities of the questioners differ, usually runs
like this:
"If we are descendants of monkeys, why are
not the monkeys turning into men today?"
*****
Let us learn Mr. Burbank's answer to this
question by turning to the golden-yellow California
poppy, so called, and the three entirely new
poppies (illustrated here in natural colors), which
he produced from it.
In order to make clear the truth which the
poppies prove, it is necessary to explain the
successive steps of the operation.
Mr. Burbank first grew a yardful of the wild,
golden-yellow poppies, such as cover California's
hills.
The individual poppies of this yardful — a
million of them, at a guess — resembled each other
as closely as one rose resembles another rose on
[289]
LUTHER BURBANK
the same bush, or as one grape resembles another
on the same bunch, as one pea resembles another
in the same pod.
Yet among those million poppies — all looking
alike to the unpracticed eye — there could be found
by a close observer as many individual differences
as could be found among any million human
beings in the world.
Among those million poppies, each with its
distinct individuality, Mr. Burbank found three
which had a decided tendency to break away from
the California poppy family and start a separate
race of their own.
This same tendency could be observed among
a million men, a million roses, a million peas, a
million quartz crystals, or a million of any of
Nature's creations.
Those one, or two, or three out of every million
with tendencies to break away are sometimes
called the freaks or "sports" of the species.
It seems as though Nature, never quite satisfied
with her creations, is always experimenting, with
the hope of creating a better result — yet limiting
those experiments to such a small percentage that
the mass of the race remains unchanged — its
characteristics preserved — its general tendencies
unaffected.
The California poppy, as it grows wild, is a rich
[290]
California Poppy
This direct color photograph print shows the wild
California poppy, so called, golden-yellow, as it grows in one
of Mr. Burbank's cactus patches. This common wild flower covers
California's hills at certain seasons and from it the State is
supposed to have received its name, "The Land of Fire."
The Golden Poppy Turned Crimson
The first transformation which Mr. Burbank wrought in the
California poppy us explained in the text matter was to turn it to
crimson. The success of this experiment can be judged
from the color photograph print shown here.
The California Poppy Turned White
The next experiment which Mr. Burbank tried was to
eliminate the yellow of the wild poppy and produce, instead,
a white flower. The tips of the petals of this poppy are now pure
white, while the centers remain a very light cream-yellow, the
only suggestion of the bright golden yellow of its ancestors.
\
The Poppy Turned Fire-Flame
In his poppy variations Mr. Burbank found some
hnfhM%' ln,ste?d °f Ending the inherited characteristics showed
both distinctly in the same flower— lemon yellow edges with golden
yellow centers. These, perhaps the most beautiful result of his
experiment, he christened "The Fire-Flame Poppy."
A BACKWARD GLANCE
golden-yellow. In spite of individual differences,
this color is the characteristic of the kind. It is a
fixed characteristic, dating back at least to the
time when California, because of the poppy
covered hills, received its name — the land of fire —
from the early Spanish navigators that ventured
up and down the coast.
Out of the billion billions of wild poppies that
have grown, each million has no doubt contained
its freaks or its "sports" — its few experimental
individuals which Nature has given the tendency
to break away from the characteristics of their
fellows.
Yet in the history of the California poppy
family, as far back as we can trace, none of these
freaks or "sports" had ever achieved its object.
Among the "sports" which Mr. Burbank found
in the million poppies he grew were one with a
crimson tendency, one with a white tendency, and
one with a lemon-yellow, fiery-red tendency.
If Mr. Burbank had not intervened, these
freaks, quite likely, would have perished without
offspring.
But by nurturing them, separating them and
saving their seeds, within a few brief seasons he
was able to produce three new kinds of the
California poppy.
Each kind had all of the parent poppy charac-
[295]
LUTHER BURBANK
teristics but one. They were California poppies
in habits, in growth, in shape, in size, in form, in
grace, in texture, in beauty.
Yet in color they differed from the California
mid poppy almost as a violet differs from a daisy.
One of these freaks developed into the solid
crimson poppy, another into the pure white poppy,
and still another into the fire-flame poppy — all
shown here.
The details of method employed and the
application of these methods and the underlying
principles to the improvement of other flowers,
fruits, trees and useful and ornamental plants, will
be left for later chapters. But as an illustration,
this poppy experiment brings home three things :
First, that Nature creates no duplicates.
Second, that although each of Nature's crea-
tions has its own distinctive individuality, all the
time she takes special precautions to fix, preserve,
and make permanent the characteristics of each
of her races or kinds.
Third, that there is always present in all of
her creations the experimental tendency to break
away from fixed characteristics — to start new
races — to branch out into entirely new forms of
development. Through Mr. Burbank's interven-
tion, in the case of the poppy, this tendency was
crowned with success; in ten thousand years,
[296]
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LUTHER BURBANK
perhaps, without intervention at all, the same
result might have been attained.
From the fern at the water's edge, to the apple
tree which bears us luscious fruit — from the oyster
that lies helpless in the bottom of Long Island
Sound, to the human being who rakes it up, and
eats it — every different form of life about us may,
thus, be traced to the experiments which Nature
is continually trying, in order to improve her
creations.
As to the question so often asked, monkeys are
no more turning into men than golden-yellow
poppies are turning into crimson, white or fire-
flame poppies.
In monkeys, as in men and poppies — and quartz
crystals — there is ever present the tendency to
break away from the kind, yet Nature is always
alert to prevent the break — unless it demonstrates
itself to be an advance, an improvement — from
occurring.
She gives us, all of us, and everything—
individuality, personality — unfailingly, always — at
the same time preserving in each the general
characteristics of its kind.
Yet all the time she is creating her freaks
and "sports" — all the time she is trying new
experiments — most of them doomed to die unpro-
ductive— with the hope that the thousand freaks
[298]
Another Color Variation
Unlike the five-flame poppy in which the center is of one color and
the outside edges of another, this poppy, unnamed, has vertical
divisions on each petal, half crimson and half yellow. This is hut
one of the countless variations secured in the poppy experiment.
LUTHER BURBANK
among a billion creations may show the way
toward a single improvement in a race.
*****
In this hurried backward glance, we have, by
no means, gone back to the beginning of things.
Even the moving picture of Nature's course from
the salt-water cell to us, covering what seems an
infinity of time, may be but a single stationary
film in a still greater moving picture— and that,
too, but a part of a greater whole.
Indeed, the further we go into our subject, the
more we are convinced that instead of having
followed the thread of life to its beginning, we
have merely been following a raveling which leads
into one of its tiny strands.
The more we learn definitely about the process
which we trace back to the simple salt-water cell,
the more we are led to inquire into those other
forms of energy — into the chemical reactions —
into the vibrations which manifest themselves to
us as sound, heat, light — into electricity and those
manifestations whose discovery is more recent,
and whose nature is less well understood.
The more we observe the phenomena in our
own fields of activity, the more we realize the
futility of trying, in a single lifetime, to explore
Infinity.
The more content we feel, instead, to learn as
[300]
A Bouquet of Poppy Variations
It would be impossible, in a single photograph to show all of
the variations which a single season's work brings forth. The bouquet
shown here, however, when compared with the original golden-
yellow parent, indicates the range of difference secured.
LUTHER BURBANK
much as we can that is useful and practical, of
the single strand of life's thread which has to do
more immediately with the thing in hand.
*****
"What do you put in the soil to make your
canna lilies so big?"
"How often do you take up the bulbs of your
gladioli?"
"How late do you keep your strawberry plants
under glass?"
These, and a hundred others of their kind, are
the questions which visitors at the experiment
farm are continually asking Mr. Burbank.
It is not that Mr. Burbank undervalues the care
of plants, or does not appreciate the importance
of cultivation.
But his questioners fail to realize that his work
has been with the insides of plants and not with
their externals.
Of the details of working method — of the little
tricks that save time — of Luther Burbank's bold
innovations which many gardeners may have
dreamed, but none have ever dared to do — of
these, in the volumes to come, we shall find plenty.
Yet, we shall find ourselves, too, searching the
times when things were not as they are, in order
to get glimpses of things as they are to be — and all,
not from the standpoint of theory, but merely to
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LUTHER BURBANK
help us in the very practical, useful work of
coaxing from Nature new forms of plant life —
better forms than, uncoaxed, she would give us —
plants which because of their greater productivity
will help us lower our constantly increasing cost
of living — plants which will yield us entirely
new substances to be used in manufactures —
plants which will grow on what now are waste
lands — plants which, by their better fruit, or their
increased beauty, or their doubled yield, or their
improved quality, will add to our individual
pleasures and profits, and to the pleasures and
profits of the whole world.
[End of Volume I]
— In order to work forward
a little, we must work
backward ages and ages.
<r -*
*V
List of
Direct Color Photograph Prints
in Volume I
/YCaCia Page
The Sensitive Plant and Its Cousin, the Acacia 44
How the Sensitive Plant Folds Up 45
Amaryllis
The Amaryllis and Its Parents 214
The Amaryllis as Improved 215
Still Another Amaryllis 216
Apple
Graft, One Year Old 201
Showing Effect of Codling Moth 260
Asparagus
Both Good Asparagus 253
Aster
Wild New England Aster and Improved 268
Bee
A Pollen Laden Bee 79
Berries
A Primus Berry 227
Some Blackberry Cam's 236
Thornless Raspberry 259
Burbank, Luther
Mr. Burbank at Sixty-Four Frontispiece
Mr. Burbank marking selections 191
Carnation
Carnation — pistil unreceptive 73
Carnation — pistil receptive 74
Carnation showing egg nest 75
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Continued)
CactUS Page
Armored Against Its Enemies 6
Every Inch Protected 9
A Relic of Past Ages 13
The Cactus Still Bears Leaves 16
As Smooth as Velvet 19
A Transformation Seen in the Making 22
After a Year in the Dark 25
A Typical Cactus Flower 27
Spineless Cactus in Patch 33
Cactus Seedlings in "Flat" 186
Cactus Seedlings Transplanted 188
Celery
Wild Celery 134
Cherry-
Five Hundred Kinds on One Tree 209
A New Canning Cherry 265
Clover
Simulating a Poisonous Look 47
Coconut
The Coconut's Three Eyes 95
Corn
An Experiment in Corn 91
Our Corn and Its Tiny Parent 127
Some Other Forms of Corn 129
Rainhow Corn 283
Dahlias
Unblended Heredities 42
Daisy
The African Orange Daisy 140
We Find a White Cousin 149
The Variations Spread Before Us 151
A Broadening of the Petals 153
More Orange in the Center 155
A Full Orange Center 157
More Evidence of Broad Petals 159
A Better Orange Than Its Parent 161
Variation on the Outside 163
We Could Make a Purple Daisy 165
Our First Pink Daisy 167
A Second Step in Selection 169
Try, Try Again 171
At Last the Pink Daisy 173
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Continued)
Devil's Claw Page
As It Grows in the Tropics 101
Shedding Its Husk 103
Ready for Action 101
Eucalyptus
An Ancestral Secret 39
Geranium
Some Dooryard Geraniums 66
The Geranium Ready to Give PolJen 70
The Geranium Ready to Receive Pollen 71
Gladiolus
Transforming the gladiolus 256
Grafts
Apple Graft One Year Old 201
Chestnut Graft One Year Old 203
Ice Plant
A Living Refrigerator 49
Lettuce
Wild Lettuce 133
Lily
Carrion Lily 81
Chinese Lily 121
Record of Selection 207
Monkey-Puzzle Tree
Armored to the Top 30
Nasturtium
A Humming Rird Flower 87
Orange
Less Rind, More Meat 123
Orchid
The Orchid Awaiting an Insect 84
The Orchid's Pollen Bundles 85
Pansy
A Response to Kindly Care 118
Pitcher Plant
This Plant Eats Insects 51
Plums
A Typical Burbank Plum 239
The Plum's Perishable Bloom 249
A Burbank Plum and Its Wild Ancestor 274
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Continued)
PluniCOt . page
Mr. Bin-bank's Plumcot 212
Showing Indestructible Bloom 251
Poppy
Poppy pods — An Effect of Hybridization 224
California Poppy 291
The Golden Poppy Turned Crimson 292
The California Poppy Turned White 293
The Poppy Turned Fire-Flame 294
Variations in Size 297
Another Color Variation 299
A Bouquet of Poppy Variations 301
White and Crimson Side by Side 303
Potato
Potato Seed Balls 57
Some Seedling Potatoes 60
The Burbank Potato 63
Variable Potato Seedlings 233
Sensitive Plant
The Sensitive Plant and Its Cousin 44
How the Sensitive Plant Folds Up 45
Snowball
Tame and Wild 112
Snow-on-the-Mountain
An Odd Trait of Heredity 281
Sunflower
Improving the Sunflower 270
A Sunflower Stalk Which Is Square 272
Tigridia
Improved Tigridias 230
Tulips
Variations in Tulips 196
View's
Many Plants in Small Space 176
A Wide Range of Variation 179
Quantity Production the Keynote '. 183
Ten Thousand Dollar Bonfire 204
Violet
The Pathos of the Violet 115
The Violet's Wonderful Advertisement 117
Walnuts
Variations in Walnuts 242
#
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