Burbank, Luther

American Horticulturist
1849-1926

Luther Burbank was the most well-known plant breeder of the Age of Agriculture. He was born March 7, 1849, in Lancaster, Massachusetts. He had little formal science training, but his efforts to better the human condition by improving useful plants made him a folk hero throughout the world. Burbank's work is said to have advanced the science of horticulture by several decades.

Burbank's first, and foremost, contribution is evidenced with every baked potato and french fry eaten today. At the age of twenty-four, Burbank discovered a seed ball on the normally sterile Early Rose potato. Inspired by English naturalist Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Burbank cultivated these seeds and used them to "build" the first white potato, the basis for the modern Burbank Russet Idaho potatoes.

In 1875, with $150 in proceeds from the sale of most of his potato stock, Burbank journeyed by train to California in search of a suitable climate for year-round cultivation. Burbank saw greater potential in the soil and climate of the state than in its famed gold mines. After a few rough years, Burbank was able to establish himself in Santa Rosa as a nurseryman who tried, and usually delivered, the impossible. After fulfilling an order for twenty thousand bearing prune trees from seed in nine months, Burbank earned a reputation as one who could succeed where others feared to try.

In 1893 Burbank's "New Creations in Fruits and Flowers" catalog created an international sensation, causing some to object that Burbank claimed powers of creation reserved only for God. Burbank believed that his plants were inventions that were developed in concert with God's agent: nature.

At his nursery, greenhouses, and experimental gardens, Burbank specialized in horticultural novelties, working on an at-demand basis for nurserymen. At any one time, Burbank might have tens of thousands of plants in cultivation and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of experiments in progress.

Burbank worked with flowers, fruits, trees, cacti, grasses, grains, and vegetables. His long-running experiments and his keen awareness of the correlation of nascent plant features with desirable traits in mature plants, helped him introduce or develop more than eight hundred varieties throughout his fifty-year career—that's a new plant every twenty-three days.

Among the many varieties he developed several are still widely used today: the Paradox Walnut (Juglans Regina x J. Californica var.), developed as a fast-growing hardwood tree for the furniture industry, today the most commonrootstock for walnuts; the 1906, Santa Rosa plum, a complex hybrid, still among the most cultivated varieties in the United States; and the quadruple hybrid Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum hybridum), introduced in 1901, one of the most popular flowers in cutting gardens today.

Some of Burbank's more unusual novelties include: more than thirty-five varieties of spineless cacti for improved fruit and better forage for livestock; the plumcot, the first creation of an entirely new stone fruit; and the white blackberry, a flavorful berry without pigment to stain hands and clothing.

Burbank's methods were not unique, but he applied them on a greater scale than previously known. A wider range of experimental varieties, a longer period of study, and a greater number of experiments underway at a given time gave Burbank an unmatched breadth of experience and genetic variability from which to work. Using space- and time-saving methods such as grafting (sometimes hundreds of varieties on one nurse tree) and budding allowed him to grow several million plants during his career.

Burbank imposed environmental changes and numerous cross-fertilizations on imported plants from across the globe to induce as many perturbations or variants as possible. From the most promising plants Burbank continued to select, hybridize, reselect, and rehybridize for several generations until he developed a marketable plant.

He employed all of his senses to judge the worthiness of his creations. His criteria for success included both attractiveness and utility. "The urge to beauty," according to Burbank, "is as important as the urge to bread." (Explanation: Beauty is as fundamental as bread.)

Although Burbank had little formal scientific training in his early years, he enjoyed the friendship and support of many leading scientists. Favorable impressions of his work led to a prestigious and lucrative five-year Carnegie Foundation grant. His brand of applied scientific practice and the increasingly astounding accounts of his new creations, however, provoked scientists' ire as well as imagination.

Burbank believed heredity and environmental circumstances governed a plant's "life force." He asserted, as did French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), that acquired characteristics (accrued forces) were inheritable, a position that became increasingly unacceptable in the scientific world. He felt that many of the mutations heralded by ever more popular Mendalians were simply hybrids.

As his career progressed, Burbank became as well known for his un-orthodox social and religious beliefs as for his plant developments. In 1907 he wrote a book entitled The Training of the Human Plant that advocated that children should learn from natural surroundings until the age of ten, foregoing formal schooling. Burbank stated publicly that he felt himself to have supernatural powers.

Just before his death in 1926, Burbank was quoted in an article as proclaiming himself an "infidel," like Christ, a man who did not believe in traditional religion. This caused a firestorm of debate across the country. Burbank later clarified his meaning on national radio, "I am a lover of man and of Christ as a man and his work, and all things that help humanity. … I prefer and claim the right to worship the infinite, everlasting, almighty Godof this vast universe as revealed to us gradually, step by step, by the demonstrable truths of our savior, science."

Burbank groomed no successors to his work. Although Burbank kept copious notes, he did not have the protection of plant patent laws, and he was protective of his practices. His efforts to institute such laws eventually encouraged their passage, but not until after his death. For years, despite his secretiveness, Burbank allowed visitors who paid admission to see his experiments. In 1905 a one-hour visit to the Sebastopol, California, experiment farm cost $10.

Burbank was twice married but had no children. He was laid to rest under a cedar of Lebanon tree he had planted from seed in front of his original home place. In death, he said, he should like to feel that his strength was flowing into the strength of the tree.

Burbank's birthday continues to be celebrated as Arbor Day in California. His legacy lives on in the form of hundreds of useful plants that benefit the world today and in his example of a man who lived a life true to his beliefs.

Agriculture, History Of; Breeder; Breeding; Hybrids and Hybridization.

Dreyer, Peter. A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank. Santa Rosa, CA: Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, City of Santa Rosa, 1985.

Jordan, David Starr, and Vernon L. Kellogg. The Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank's Work. San Francisco: American Robertson, 1909.

Williams, Henry Smith, et al., eds. Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application. Santa Rosa, CA: Luther Burbank Press, 1915.