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Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849–April 11, 1926) was an American botanist, horticulturist, and pioneer of agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's varied creations included fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.

Burbank's most successful strains and varieties include the Shasta daisy, the Fire poppy, the July Elberta peach, the Santa Rosa plum, the Flaming Gold nectarine, the Burbank plum, the Freestone peach, and the Burbank potato. Burbank also bred the white blackberry and the nectarine. A natural sport (genetic variant) of the Burbank potato with russet (reddish-brown) skin later became known as the Russet-Burbank potato: this large, brown-skinned, white-fleshed potato has become the predominant processing potato in the United States of America.

Life and Work

Born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Burbank grew up on a farm and received only an elementary education. The thirteenth of 15 children, he enjoyed the plants in his mother's large garden. His father died when he was 21 years old, and Burbank used his small inheritance to buy a 17-acre (69,000 m²) plot of land near Lunenberg.

Burbank developed the Burbank potato, 1872 to 1874. Burbank sold the rights to the Burbank potato for $150 and used the money to travel to Santa Rosa, California, in 1875. Later, a natural sport of 'Burbank' potato with russetted skin was selected and named 'Russet Burbank'. Today, the 'Russet Burbank' potato is the most widely cultivated potato in the United States, prized for processing. McDonald's French fries are made exclusivly from this cultivar.

In Santa Rosa, Burbank purchased a 4-acre plot of land, and established a greenhouse, nursery, and experimental fields that he used to conduct crossbreeding experiments on plants, inspired by Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. (This site is now open to the public as a city park, Luther Burbank Home and Gardens.) Later he purchased an 18-acre plot of land in the nearby town of Sebastopol for more experimental growing.

Burbank's creations included: Fruits

  • 113 plums and prunes
  • 35 fruiting cacti
  • 16 blackberries
  • 13 Raspberries
  • 11 quinces
  • 11 plumcots
  • Ten cherries
  • Ten strawberries
  • Ten apples
  • Eight peaches
  • Six chestnuts
  • Five nectarines
  • Four grapes
  • Four pears
  • Three walnuts
  • Two figs
  • One almond Grains, grasses, forage
    • Nine types

    Vegetables

    • 26 types

    Ornamentals

    • 91 types

    Burbank was criticized by scientists of his day because he did not keep the kind of careful records that are the norm in scientific research and because he was mainly interested in getting results rather than in basic research. Jules Janick, Ph.D., Professor of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, writing in the World Book Encyclopedia, 2004 edition, says: "Burbank cannot be considered a scientist in the academic sense."

    During his career, Burbank wrote, or co-wrote, several books on his methods and results, including his eight-volume How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (1921), Harvest of the Years (with Wilbur Hall, 1927), Partner of Nature (1939), and the 12-volume Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application. Burbank also published in 1893 a descriptive catalog of some of his best varieties, entitled called New Creations in Fruits and Flowers.

    Other works include:

    • The Training of the Human Plant
    • Some Interesting Failures: The Petunia with the Tobacco Habit, and Others
    • The Almond and Its Improvement: Can It Be Grown Inside of the Peach?
    • Four Burbank Plums, and How They were Made: Methods Which Brought Unprecedented Success
    • Corn: The King of America's Crops: Not Only Better Corn, But a Better Stalk and Why
    • Twenty-three Potato Seeds and What They Taught A Glimpse at the Influence of Heredity
    • Other Useful Plants Which Will Repay Experiment: Transformations and Improvements Waiting to Be Made
    • How Plants Adapt Themselves to Conditions: The Influence of Environment
    • The Tomato and an Interesting Experiment: A Plant which Bore Potatoes Below and Tomatoes Above
    • The Rivalry of Plants To Please Us: On the Forward March of Adaptation
    • How the Cactus Got Its Spines and How It Lost Them: A Sidelight on the Importance of Environment
    • Some Plants which are Begging for Immediate Improvement: Some Plants which are Begging for Immediate Improvement
    • Manufacturing Food for the Live Stock: Some Suggestions on Clover, Timothy and Alfalfa
    • Plants Which Yield Useful Chemical Substances: Observations on Sugar Cane, Hops and Sugar Beets
    • Short-Cuts into the Centuries to Come: Better Plants Secured by Hurrying Evolution
    • What to Work for in Flowers: And How to Proceed
    • No Two Living Things Exactly Alike: Infinite Ingenuity the Price of Variation
    • Fixing Good Traits: How to Hold a Result Once Achieved
    • How Far Can Plant Improvement Go?: The Crossroads Where Fact and Theory Seem to Part
    • The Burbank Cherry: The Explanation of a Double Improvement
    • My Life and Work with Fruits and Flowers
    • Garden Culture
    • Burbank's new creations and special new selections in seeds
    • Proof book number 1
    • How nature makes plants to our order
    • Luther Burbank, his methods and discoveries and their practical application: A synopsis
    • Fundamental principles of plant breeding: Production of new trees, fruits and flowers : plants and children
    • Another mode of species forming
    • Advance offering of pedigreed Burbank novelties: Fruits and flowers direct from Burbank nurseries, season 1912-1913
    • New plants to feed the world: And other articles by and about Luther Burbank from Orchard and Farm
    • The new Shasta daisies: "Alaska", "California", "Westralia"
    • The fundamental principles of plant breeding
    • Plant breeding (How his first plants are trained to work for man)

    He also wrote two books unrelated to botany: Piecing the Fragments of a Motion Picture Film : We Stop to Take a Backward Glance and My Beliefs.

    By all accounts, Burbank was a kindly man who wanted to help other people. He was very interested in education and gave quite a bit of money to the local schools. He married twice: To Helen Coleman in 1880, which ended in divorce in 1896, and to Elizabeth Waters in 1916. He had no children.

    Burbank also had a mystical, spiritual side. His friend and admirer Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in his Autobiography of a Yogi:

    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.

    In a speech given to the First Congregational Church of San Francisco in 1926 Burbank said:

    I love humanity, which has been a constant delight to me during all my seventy-seven years of life; and I love flowers, trees, animals, and all the works of Nature as they pass before us in time and space. What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors, and perfumes in flowers which were never known before; fruits in form, size, and flavor never before seen on this globe; and grains of enormously increased productiveness, whose fat kernels are filled with more and better nourishment, a veritable storehouse of perfect food--new food for all the world's untold millions for all time to come.

    In mid-March 1926, Burbank suffered a heart attack and became ill with gastrointestinal complications. He died on April 11, 1926, and is buried near the greenhouse at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens.

    Legacy

    Burbank's work spurred the passing of the 1930 Plant Patent Act four years after his death. The legislation made it possible to patent new varieties of plants (excluding tuber-propagated plants). In supporting the legislation, Thomas Edison testified before Congress in support of the legislation and said that "This * will, I feel sure, give us many Burbanks." The authorities issued Plant Patents #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #18, #41, #65, #66, #235, #266, #267, #269, #290, #291, and #1041 to Burbank posthumously.

    In 1986, Burbank was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, in downtown Santa Rosa, are now designated as a National Historic Landmark.

    The town of Burbank, California, does not take its name from Burbank, but from the Los Angeles dentist David Burbank; however, the horticulturist gave his name to Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank. The Luther Burbank School District in San Jose and Santa Rosa's Luther Burbank Rose Parade and Festival also honor Luther Burbank. Santa Rosa used to have a performing arts center named after Burbank, but Wells Fargo bought naming rights for $3.2 million in 2006 and renamed it. The Lancaster Middle School in Lancaster, Massachusetts was renamed to Luther Burbank Middle School in 2003.

    The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center has digitized and published online the 12-volume monographic series Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries, which documents Burbank's methods and discoveries and their practical application.

    In 1931 the Boys Parental School located on Mercer Island, Washington changed its name to Luther Burbank School. The school continued to function until 1966. The land on which the school was built was bought by King County and converted into Luther Burbank Park.

    The standard botanical author abbreviation for Burbank consists simply of "Burbank".

    References

    • Kraft, K. Luther Burbank, the Wizard and the Man. New York : Meredith Press, 1967 ASIN: B0006BQE6C
    • Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles : Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946 ISBN 0876120834

    External links

    American botanists | People from Santa Rosa, California | People from Massachusetts | Horticulturists | Botanists | 1849 births | 1926 deaths | Unitarian Universalists | National Inventors Hall of Fame

    Luther Burbank | Luther Burbank | Luther Burbank | Luther Burbank

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Luther Burbank".

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