Luther Burbank

Background

Burbank was born on March 7, 1849, in Lancaster, Massachussets, United States. The thirteenth of eighteen children, he enjoyed the plants in his mother's large garden.

Education

Luther attended the district school until he was 15 and then spent four winters at the Lancaster Academy. Most of his scientific education, however, was obtained from reading at the public library in Lancaster.

Career

According to his own account, his reading of Charles Darwin's Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication in 1868 proved the turning point in his career, causing him to take the production of new species and varieties of plants as his life's work.

In 1870, 2 years after the death of his father, Burbank used his inheritance to help purchase a tract of 17 acres near the small town of Lunenburg, where he took up the business of market gardening. Here he produced his first "creation, " the Burbank potato, and began the work that was to make him famous. Despite his success as a market gardener, in 1875 Burbank decided to sell his land and move to California, where his three older brothers had already moved. He settled in Santa Rosa, where he would carry on his work for the next 50 years.

Although Burbank had read the scientific literature, he never operated as a scientist and apparently never thought of himself as one. His methods were empirical; he imported plants from foreign countries, made crosses of every conceivable kind-often for no apparent reason except, as he said, to get "perturbation" in the plants so as to get as wide and as large a variation as possible-and grew hundreds of thousands of plants under differing environmental conditions. He kept records only for his own use; once a project was completed and a new plant on the market, the records were generally destroyed.

Burbank's creative work ranged over a long list of plants, but his strongest interests were in plums, berries, and lilies. For example, the Shasta daisy, a favorite of Burbank, was the result of a multiple crossing between a European and an American species of field daisy and then between these hybrids and a Japanese variety. The Shirley poppy was obtained by long selection from a crimson European poppy. The Fire poppy was a hybrid from a butter-colored species and a pure-white species that had a dull red in its ancestry. The fragrant calla, which has a perfume resembling that of the violet, was discovered by accident in a flat of Little Gem calla seedlings.

Luther's new fruits, besides the many plums and prunes, included varieties of apples, peaches, quinces, and nectarines. One of his less profitable creations, the result of an effort to excite "perturbations," was a cross between the peach and the almond. At one time or another, he worked with virtually all the common garden vegetables.

One of his most unusual experiments resulted in the production of a series of spineless cacti useful for feeding cattle in arid regions. The product of his thinking was first published in 1907 as The Training of the Human Plant.

Achievements

• Luther Burbank was popularly known as a "wizard" because of the stream of new and improved forms that came from his experimental agricultural farm. Overall, he developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. He invented, later became known, the russet Burbank potato, that helped with the devastating situation in Ireland during the Irish Potato famine. He developed (but did not create) a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.
  
  Luther originated more than 40 new varieties of plums and prunes, mostly from multiple crossings in which Japanese plums played a prominent part. His work with berries, extending over 35 years, resulted in the introduction of at least 10 new varieties, mostly obtained through hybridizations of dewberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Burbank wrote and co-wrote several books on his methods and results, including his eight-volume How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man, Harvest of the Years, Partner of Nature.

Works

More photos

• book

  • How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man, Vol. 5 (Classic Reprint)

    (Volume VB yC hapters Foreword Page 3I How the Plum Follow...)

  • How plants are trained to work for man Volume 4

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Partner of nature,

    (This volume, written in non-technical language, covers th...)

  • How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

    (Luscious FRUIT 150 POTATO SEED BALLS 168 LEAVES OF STRAWB...)

  • The Training Of The Human Plant

    (THE TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT By Luther Burbank Conte...)

  • Luther Burbank, Vol. 5: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Luther Burbank, Vol. 5: His Methods and Disc...)

  • How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

    (Luther Burbank ...... Frontispiece PAGE AC ross of Orange...)

Views

Burbank's work with plants convinced him that the key to good breeding was selection and environment, and he, like so many others of his time, tried to apply his concepts to human society. He had a firm belief in the then-discredited theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics; accordingly, unlike most eugenists of the period, he stressed education and the provision of a good environment generally as the best way to remake human society.

Quotations: Paramahansa Yogananda wrote about Luther Burbank: "His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amid the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions. The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast."

Membership

Luther was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Personality

Burbank was a kindly man who wanted to help other people. He was praised and admired not only for his gardening skills but for his modesty, generosity and kind spirit.

Connections

Luther married twice: to Helen Coleman in 1890, which ended in divorce in 1896; and to Elizabeth Waters in 1916. He had no children.

Spouse:

Helen Coleman

Spouse:

Elizabeth Waters

Sister:

Emma Burbank Beeson

Friend:

Paramahansa Yogananda

References

• Luther Burbank: The Man Who Scattered Pollen Underneath the Sun
• A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank
• Here a Plant, There a Plant, Everywhere a Plant, Plant: A Story of Luther Burbank
• Luther Burbank, Boy Wizard
• Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application. Volume I