The New Student's Reference Work/Burbank, Luther
Bur′bank, Luther, the “Plant Wizard,” after four years of patient effort, developed the famous Burbank potato from small tubers of scanty yield when only a boy on the farm on which he was born near Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1849. Although his achievement soon added $20,000,000 a year to the value of our potato crop, he sold his rights to a local seedsman for $150. Not long after, his health requiring outdoor life, he went to California, worked at odd jobs as a farm hand and finally saved enough to start a small nursery. When it was bringing him a profit of nearly $10,000 a year, he gave it up, against the protest of friends, and began the series of experiments on his farm at Santa Rosa which have given us not only the thornless, edible, fruit-bearing cactus, but a long list of other wonders of the plant world, including the crimson poppy, the Shasta daisy, a combination of plum and apricot called the plumcot, the white blackberry, new varieties of apples, pears and cherries, and a walnut tree that produces a wood like mahogany and of remarkably rapid growth. His thornless cactus is a forage plant showing great improvement in productiveness even over alfalfa. The fruit has a flavor between the raspberry and the pineapple, and will grow on the desert as well as the spiny variety. Thousands of acres have been planted, not only in this, but in almost every foreign country. Where alfalfa grows five to ten tons per acre, this cactus produces fifty to two hundred tons. The money derived by Mr. Burbank from the sale of improved varieties, considering the outlay required to produce them, has been small—from $100 to $500 each. Having disposed of the commercial department of his work he now gives his exclusive attention to producing improved varieties of trees, plants and flowers.
SOME OF THE PLANT WIZARD'S WORK
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| Copyright by the Macmillan Co. | |
| POTATO CAUSED TO GROW ON TOMATO VINE | |
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| Copyright by the Macmillan Co. | |
| THESE WILD POTATOES ARE CROSSED WITH TAME POTATOES TO MAKE THEM HARDY |
