Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849 – April 11, 1926)Luther Burbank. Peach and Other Fruit. US Patent No. PP15. Inducted in 1986, National Inventors Hall of Fame was an American botanist, horticulturist, and pioneer in agricultural science who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank primarily worked with fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed (but did not create) a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.
Burbank's most successful strains and varieties included the Shasta daisy, the fire poppy (note possible confusion with the California wildflower, Papaver californicum, which is also called a "fire poppy"), the "July Elberta" peach, the "Santa Rosa" plum, the "Flaming Gold" nectarine, the "Wickson" plum (named after the agronomist Edward J. Wickson), the freestone peach, and the white blackberry.
A natural genetic variant of the Burbank potato with russet-colored skin later became known as the russet Burbank potato. This large, brown-skinned, white-fleshed potato has become the world's predominant potato in food processing. The Russet Burbank potato originated to help with the devastating situation in Ireland following the Great Famine of 1845-1852. This particular potato variety was developed by Burbank and exported to Ireland to "revive that country's leading crop" as it is slightly late-blight-resistant. (Late blight is a disease that spread and destroyed potatoes all across Europe, but caused extreme chaos in Ireland due to the Irish population's high dependency on potatoes as a crop.)
Life and work Born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Burbank grew up on a farm and received only a high school education in Lancaster County Academy. The thirteenth of fifteen children,Luther's father, Samuel Walton, had nine children with wife Hannah Ball, two children with wife Mary Ann Rugg and four children with wife Olive Ross. In addition the first birth with Olive did not survive a day, so is not counted among the fifteen. he enjoyed the plants in his mother's large garden. His father died when he was 18 years old, and Burbank used his inheritance to buy a 17-acre (69,000 m2) plot of land near Lunenburg center. There, he developed the Burbank potato. Burbank sold the rights to the Burbank potato for $150 ($ in dollars) and used the money to travel to Santa Rosa, California, in 1875. Later, a natural vegetative sport (that is, an aberrant growth that can be reproduced reliably in cultivation) of Burbank potato with russetted skin was selected and named Russet Burbank potato. Today, the Russet Burbank potato is the most widely cultivated potato in the United States. The potato is popular because it doesn't expire as easily as other types of potatoes. A large percentage of McDonald's french fries are made from this cultivar.
In Santa Rosa, Burbank purchased a 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 plot of land in the nearby town of Sebastopol, called Gold Ridge Farm.
Burbank became known through his plant catalogs, the most famous being 1893's "New Creations in Fruits and Flowers," and through the word of mouth of satisfied customers, as well as press reports that kept him in the news throughout the first decade of the century.
In that same year, Stark Bro's Nurseries & Orchards Co. discovered the 'Delicious' apple, an elongated fruit with five bumps on the calyx end. The oddly-shaped apple attracted the attention of Burbank, a famed grafter and budder of trees, plants and flowers. He called the new 'Delicious' variety "the finest-flavored apple in all the world." It was also in 1893 that the Starks began their storied cooperation with Luther Burbank and his fantastic new varieties of fruits.
Among those with the foresight to recognize the possibilities of Burbank's work was Clarence McDowell Stark, who went to California and sought Burbank out. After talking to him in Santa Rosa and seeing the results of his experiments, Clarence was convinced that Burbank was right, and his professorial critics were wrong. To Clarence's great dismay, he saw that Luther Burbank was operating a small seed and nursery business in an attempt to finance his experiments and provide himself a living. It was clear that he would never be able to realize his potential under these meager circumstances.
Clarence said to Burbank: "I don't think you will ever make a real success in the nursery business because your heart is not in it. But if you will carry forward the type of hybridizing you are doing, I think you will go very far in your chosen field. To demonstrate our sincere belief in your work, our company will give you $9,000 if you will let me pick three of these new fruits you have shown me."
Burbank often credited the Stark family with making his work profitable. In return, he later joined with Thomas Edison to support Paul Stark Sr. in his fight to get patent legislation passed for plant breeders. Along with Clarence's $9,000 worth of help, Luther also had something of a fan club – The Luther Burbank Society. The group took it upon themselves to publish his discoveries and manage his business affairs, affording him some additional means by which to live.
From 1904 through 1909, Burbank received several grants from the Carnegie Institution to support his ongoing research on hybridization. He was supported by the practical-minded Andrew Carnegie himself, over those of his advisers who objected that Burbank was not "scientific" in his methods.
Gastrointestinal complications and violent hiccups weakened Luther in the last two weeks before his death, which was ultimately caused by heart failure. At his bedside were Elizabeth (his wife) and his sister when he died on April 11, 1926. The famous botanist was buried in an unmarked grave, under a giant Cedar of Lebanon at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens in Santa Rosa, California. The tree in the photo no longer stands.
As Burbank's life drew to a close, the question arose as to who would carry on his work, and naturally there were many interested in doing so. Before his death in April 1926, Luther Burbank spoke quietly to his wife, and said:
"If anything happens to me, you will have to dispose of the business and the work, because you can't go on with it. There aren't a dozen organizations in the world that are equipped to go forward with it; of them all, there is really only one I think of that could make the most of it."
He named Stark Bro's Nurseries & Orchards Co. to carry on the work. Considerable argument has been spent upon whether the plants were technically willed to Stark Bro's; they were not. He left everything to Elizabeth: money, personal property, real estate, dozens of municipal utility bonds — and the plants and precious seeds. Elizabeth had first approached both Stanford and Berkeley to have either or both universities take over the experimental farm, but sold to Stark when those proffers didn't materialize. Mrs. Burbank entered into an agreement with Stark Bro's on August 23, 1927, to take the material they wanted from Burbank's properties. The contract included ownership of the business name and all of the customer information. A September 6, 1927, contract provided exclusive rights to sell uncompleted experiments with fruits at Sebastopol (except the Royal and Paradox) for 10 years. Stark Bro's had right of renewal. Tax receipts indicate payments of $27,000 to Mrs. Burbank. Exciting new kinds of fruits and flowers Burbank had developed (but never marketed) included 120 types of plums, 18 peaches, 28 apples, 500 hybrid roses, 30 cherries, 34 pears, 52 gladioli and many more. Stark Bro's subsequently introduced many of these varieties of their catalog.
Until 1931, the Experiment Farm fell into some disrepair, so Stark Bro's sent emissaries to retrieve the most promising fruit, nut and ornamental shrubs, and in 1931 sold the flowers, vegetables and seeds to Burpee Seed Co. J. B. Keil came from Stark Bro's to coordinate the efforts and worked there from 1931 to 1934. Over the following years, Elizabeth worked with the Stark brothers to patent 16 Burbank fruits and flowers. The patents name Luther Burbank, deceased, as "inventor" by Elizabeth Waters Burbank, executrix of his estate. In 1935, Stark ended the agreement with Mrs. Burbank (or vice versa).
Mrs. Burbank then dispersed the majority of the gardens for subdivision. She sold the remaining property (excluding the house and greenhouse) to the Santa Rosa Junior College for use as a training ground. This lasted until 1954 (J. B. Keil stayed on as the caretaker). Twenty years later, the City took over ownership of the property (which it retains today as a free public showplace). The gardens include a thornless rose, spineless cactus, rainbow corn, a hybrid mulberry tree (which Luther hoped would spark an American silk industry) and his red combustion plant (Euonymus alatus).
Burbank cultivars
Burbank created hundreds of new varieties of fruits (plum, pear, prune, peach, blackberry, raspberry); potato, tomato; ornamental flowers and other plants. He introduced over 800 new plants, including flowers, grains, grasses, vegetables, cacti, and fruits.
Fruits
Grains, grasses, forage 9 types
Vegetables 26 types
Ornamentals 91 types
On paper his method seems simple, but in practice it was extremely difficult. Most of the time, he would grow 10,000 or more plants of one variety, from which he selected as many as 50 seedlings or as few as one. From the selected plant or plants, he grew another 10,000 seedlings, continuing selective process until he produced the results he wanted. When he started his work, chestnut trees took 25 years to bear fruit. From his efforts, chestnut trees produced fruit after three years. A white blackberry so clear that one could see the seeds inside, a juicy and large plum which is still considered one of the finest in the world, a spineless cactus, and a calla lily with fragrant odor were among his many creations.
Publications
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 creating useful or targeted cultivars rather than in the basic research of understanding their biology or the mechanisms by which his artificial selection schemes achieved their results. Purdue University professor Jules Janick, writing in the 2004 World Book Encyclopedia, says: "Burbank cannot be considered a scientist in the academic sense."
Although Burbank may not have been a scientist by the standards of his peers, his lack of record keeping reflected the difficulties of developing and distributing cultivars in the era in which he lived. His innovations were revolutionary, and in a time when there was no way to legally protect one's inventions, Burbank may have been cautious with the successes he decided to document. Additionally, his records may not have been coherent (to the chagrin of modern scholars) because he felt his time was better valued in the garden, not writing each trial and error down in his record book.Smith, Jane S. "Faster, Better, Sweeter." The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants. New York: Penguin, 2009. N. pag. Print.
In 1893, Burbank published a descriptive catalog of some of his best varieties, entitled New Creations in Fruits and Flowers.