Bearing Crops when Six Months Old
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BurbanK
Pineapple Quince Seedlings
DurbanK
Chestnut Seedling
ONE OF the principal factors in
Luther Burbank's success as a
creator of new and better forms
of plant life has been his ability
to hurry Nature and to make her pro
duce in a single season the results which
she would prefer to take her own con
venient time five years, seven years,
ten years to produce.
In creating new forms of plant life,
large quantity production and speed arc
both essential.
The plant breeder knows, as a cer
tainty, that the offspring of two different
parents a cross between them will
reproduce a combination of the char
acteristics of those parents.
But just as one human child of a
brunette father and a blond mother may
have its mother's blue eyes and its fath
er's dark hair; and just as the next child
of the same parents may resemble its
father in features and its mother in tem
perament; and so on endlessly just so in
mating plants it is impossible to predict
just what combination of the parent char
acteristics will be reproduced.
This much, however, the plant breeder
can do to produce a definite result:
He can make a thousand, ten thousand,
or a hundred thousand crosses; and he
can be sure that while no two will be pre
cisely alike, yet practically every char
acteristic of the two parents will be re
produced, in combination; and that from
so great a number from which to select,
he can find the offspring which represents
all of the good qualities desired with
none, or practically none, of the faults.
Having produced an infinity of varieties
from which to select, the plant breeder
must wait, if the result desired is a (lower,
until the cross breeds have bloomed; or,
if a fruit or a nut, until the cross breeds
have borne.
Although there arc certain definite
known rules by which most of the unde
sirables can be weeded out from the baby
seedlings soon after they show their
heads above the ground, yet the final
flower or fruit or nut is the supreme
test the only true proof of which of the
new varieties is worthy to be saved and
perpetuated.
By means, which there is not room to"
describe here, but which are to be fully
explained in the free monographs issued
by The Luther IHirbank Society, Luther
Burbank has been able to shorten Na
ture's processes so that she gives him an
almost immediate answer as to the suc
cess of his experiments.
The illustrations above arc typical of
Luther Burbank's methods quince seed
lings so heavily loaded with fruit that
they can hardly stand a chestnut seed
ling six months old bearing a cluster of
perfect nuts all done for the purpose
of proving some experiment of show
ing which one or two, out of possibly
ten thousand crosses, is worthy of
preservation and propagation.
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