Science: A Golden Jubilee

Luther Burbank, greatest wizard of the plant world, crowned with years, a prophet honored in his own country, was the central figure of the Burbank Golden Jubilee Celebration and Sonoma County Prune Festival at Santa Rosa, CaL, which has been his home since he moved there from Massachusetts in 1875.

The week was marked by a Mardi Gras atmosphere, a parade with hundreds of floral floats, a historical pageant of the community’s life ” Under Five Flags,” special tributes from California’s children, astonishing botanical exhibits, congratulatory telegrams to Burbank from friends all over the world, including Governor Richardson, (Cal.), Secretaries Wallace and Hoover, Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, David Starr Jordan, Ray Lyman Wilbur, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, T. J. J. See, Douglas Fairbanks and great scientific societies.

Burbank is 74 years old and comes of old Colonial stock. He has lived practically all his life on a farm. On his 22 acres of land in and near Santa Rosa, more than 100,000 distinct experiments have been carried out, involving 6,000 species of plants, fruits and trees, and numberless varieties from all over the world which can be grown in that latitude. More than 1,000,000 plants are raised every year, of which he discards over 95% as not having the particular qualities which he wishes to perpetuate. All his work has been done by three simple methods of genetic science, not original with him but brought to their highest efficiency by his exhaustive knowledge and the super-keenness of his senses: 1). Careful selection and breeding from indi-vidual plants showing exceptional variations in each generation. 2). Crosspollenizing different varieties or species to produce unusual hybrids. 3). Grafting of desirable seedlings into mature trees.

By these methods he has originated the following more conspicuous among hundreds of new varieties and species: The edible thornless cactus; more than 60 new varieties of plums and prunes, including seedless ones; the plumcot (cross between plum and apricot and the only new orchard fruit originated in historic times) ; the Primus, Phenomenal and Paradox berries (crosses between various types of raspberries, dewberries, and blackberries); the white and thornless blackberries; the sunberry; the Burbank cherry; Crimson winter rhubarb; the Shasta daisy; the hybrid Tigridia and Watsonia, spectacular flowers; the giant amaryllis; many varieties of callas, dahlias, primroses, gladioli, verbenas, roses and lilies; the South American lippia, a grass requiring little water; smooth-burr chestnuts; the camassia, a flowering food-plant; the Burbank onion and potato; innumerable other nuts, grasses, grains and trees.