Luther Burbank

Burbank, Luther 

Born July 3, 1849, in Lancaster, Massachusetts; died Nov. 4, 1926, in Santa Rosa, California. American selectionist and Darwinist; self-taught scientist who developed many new varieties of fruit, vegetable, field, and ornamental crops.

Burbank was born into the family of a farmer. He established a fruit and ornamental nursery in Santa Rosa in 1875 and later, in nearby Sebastopol. He worked there until his death. From seeds obtained from free pollination and intervarietal, interspecific, and intergeneric hybridization, Burbank developed a stoneless plum, a plumcot (a cross between the plum and the apricot), a thornless cactus that provides delicious fruits and valuable cattle fodder, an edible dwarf chestnut that bears fruit in its second year, a walnut with a paper-thin shell, a quince with a pineapple odor, a white blackberry, a thornless blackberry, a sweet onion with bulbs weighing more than 1 kg, a fragrant dahlia, a blue poppy, and a species of Amaryllis with flowers as large as 30 cm in diameter. Burbank achieved his greatest successes in work with plums, developing 113 varieties of this crop. The best of these are the Santa Rosa, Wickson, Burbank, America, Beauty, Black Sugar, Climax, Duarte, and Shiro plums. Many of these plums are cultivated in Argentina, North Africa, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in the USA.

Leading scientists recognized Burbank as a talented representative of creative Darwinism. K. A. Timeriazev called him a “miracle worker” and ranked him among the top scientists and selectionists. I. V. Michurin regarded his California colleague highly and described him as “not a copier nor an epigone, but one who worked according to his own original methods of improvement.. .. His single profound study of the laws of plant life enabled him to improve and increase the varieties of fruit plants” (Soch., vol. 4, 1948, p. 422).

Since he received no support from the government, Burbank was in constant need of funds and was unable to apply his talents fully. His work was not adequately pursued in America. Many varieties developed by Burbank have been lost or forgotten.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Izbr. soch. Moscow, 1955.

REFERENCES

Timiriazev, K. A. “Dva dara nauki.” Soch., vol. 9. Moscow, 1939.
Garvud, A. Obnovlennaia zemlia, ν sokrashch. Izlozhenii K. A. Timiriazeva. Moscow, 1919.