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