LUTHER BURBANK: A Modern Progressive in Victorian Clothing
For many today, the name "Luther Burbank" means little, but it is said that, at one time, his name was more recognizable than that of the President of the United States.
Luther Burbank, horticulturist and plant breeder (1849-1926), was known as "The Plant Wizard" much as his good friend, Thomas Alva Edison, was known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park". Burbank's body of work in grafting and hybridization - spanning some fifty-odd years - was so innovative for its time it has been called the precursor to the modern science of Genetics.
Perhaps the young Luther Burbank was destined for greatness from the beginning. . .
Born the youngest of 13 children in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Burbank's parents were intellectuals whose dinner guests often included prominent professors, writers and scientists of the day. One of his uncles was also the curator of a natural history museum at a nearby university.
Almost from the start a precocious, young Burbank demonstrated considerable ingenuity, originality and inventiveness with a knack for problem solving. When still a child, he designed and built a working prototype of an automatic rowing machine for his row boat utilizing steam power.
According to Burbank himself, the catalyst for his lifelong work with plants came in the form of Charles Darwin's book "Plants and Animals Currently Under Domestication" which he read at a very early age.
Burbank would later tell the story of being ten years old, sitting on a small hill near his home in Massachusetts, watching a long line of freight cars make their way along the railroad tracks when he suddenly envisioned each of the boxcars bursting full with fruits, nuts, grains and vegetables, all engineered by the scientific manipulation of Darwin's theories to create more prolifically-bearing plants that were disease, insect, and drought resistant "with which to feed a hungry world".
In this "Information Age", most of us are well aware of the concept of "world hunger" - mostly through the efforts of such large and far-reaching organizations as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the World Resources and Worldwatch Institutes and the highly-publicized successes of "Farm Aid" and "We Are the World". In 1859, however, the concept of a world food supply was yet to be conceived. Even by today's standards, it would be remarkable for a child to possess the extraordinary levels of comprehension and empathy required to embrace such a concept.
One of Burbank's uncles was a "truck farmer" (what we would call a hobbyist today) and it was while working with him one day that Burbank discovered the "seed potato" which would prove to be the first of thousands of successful experiments in plant breeding.
As a rule, potatoes are easily propagated through division of the tuber, but only once in a great while do any of the resulting plants flower and produce seed. At the age of about 19, the young Burbank found such a plant one day while working with his uncle, saved and planted the resulting seeds. By selective breeding through a few generations, he was able to produce a superior tasting potato that proved to be highly resistant to the potato blight which had been the cause of mass starvation during the "Potato Famine" in Ireland.
Burbank sold the rights to his potato a couple of years later for $150 (a tidy sum in those days) to an Idaho potato farmer who renamed it the "Russet". Using that money, Burbank moved west to Northern California where his two brothers were already living. He was later to call Sonoma County ". . . the chosen spot of all the earth as far as nature is concerned" because of its climate and sheer diversity of native flora.
Today, the Russet Potato is largest-selling potato in the world and the reason can be summed up in two words: "French fries". No other potato has yet been bred or discovered that makes better French fries than Burbank's "Russet". McDonald's has built an empire on it.
Finally settling in the town of Santa Rosa California, Burbank established a nursery business while continuing his experiments in plant breeding and eventually acquired several other nursery sites including his "Experiment Farm" at Gold Ridge in the nearby town of Sebastopol.
Word began to spread regarding his considerable abilities after his seemingly miraculous successes in breeding thorn-less varieties of cacti and blackberries, "white" blackberries, crosses of stone-fruits, e.g., an apricot/plum cross that he called the "Plumcot" (now called a "Pluot"), the nectarine, the "Santa Rosa" plum and flowering plants such as the world-famous "Shasta daisy" (Leucanthemum x superbum).
Fascinated by the humble oxeye daisy he had been familiar with in his youth in the northeastern U.S., it would take Burbank over 15 years and four different varieties of daisies from all over the world (a North American oxeye daisy, English field daisy, Portuguese field daisy and Japanese daisy) to create the hybrid he named the "Shasta" for the likewise stark white of perpetual snow atop Mt. Shasta in Northern California.
The Shasta daisy remains a flower-garden staple after more than a century since its invention. Depending upon which source you wish to credit, there are from 150 to 400 cultivars of the Shasta daisy available today and it narrowly missed being named the official flower of the United States a few years ago. (Because of intense lobbying by the florist industry, the rose won out; however, one would be hard-pressed to name a flower in existence that reflects the principle of "good, old Yankee ingenuity" better than the Shasta Daisy - a truly "American flower".)
Success in such a great measure, however, almost always attracts the attention of devious people who conspire to relieve the successful of the fruits of their hard-won labors. Burbank was no exception. Hybrids that had taken him hundreds of generations and many years to perfect were stolen by unscrupulous employees and sold out from under him to other growers. Exacerbating the situation was the complete lack at the time of patent laws for plant materials which might have protected him against these losses; however, Burbank's estate received posthumous patents for some of his inventions when the laws were finally revised several years after his death.
Success can also attract attention of a more positive nature and, for Burbank, this included an almost constant stream of the great and near-great of the day who beat a path to his door to behold for themselves the "wizard at work", including, among many others: Helen Keller, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Jack London, and Paramhansa Yogananda (author of "Autobiography of a Yogi").
Impressed with what they had heard about Burbank, in 1915 Edison and Ford traveled by train from San Francisco (where they were attending the Pan-Pacific Exposition) to Santa Rosa to meet him in person. During that visit, a well-known photograph was taken of the three men seated together on Burbank's front porch. The photo has an immediate impact upon the viewer as a powerful portrait of the meeting of three of the most creative and innovative minds of their time whose ideas so profoundly affected the course of future events that the world was changed - revolutionized - forever afterwards. . .
Indeed, Edison, Ford and Harvey Firestone held Burbank in such high regard that, years after Burbank's death, Harvey Firestone used Burbank's beloved shovel to turn the first piece of ground on the site of the future Ford Museum. After Burbank's death, Ford also had Burbank's nursery office dismantled, moved in its entirety and then reassembled where it now stands on the grounds of Ford's Greenfield Village Park in Dearborn, Michigan.
In contrast to the esteem held by Ford, Edison and Firestone for Burbank's scientific methodology, the Paramhansa Yogananda voiced his admiration and regard for the rather more philosophical and spiritual side of Burbank. In fact, he dedicated an entire chapter, Chapter 38, of his book "Autobiography of a Yogi" to Burbank - calling him his "American saint":
"Behold a man . . . in whom there is no guile! His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amidst the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions. The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast." ("Autobiography of a Yogi", 1946, Crystal Clarity Publishers.)
The Yogananda claimed that, during a conversation about Burbank's deceased mother, Burbank told him he "felt" his mother's "presence" around him in the plants and flowers. This confession must have resonated as one completely in concert with the yogi's own profound belief in reincarnation.
As is often the case with geniuses and forward-thinkers, Burbank was shunned and derided in his later years by some of the same people who formerly idolized him. This considerable shift in public opinion occurred after a newspaper interview was published, wherein Burbank was asked about his views on religion. Burbank referred to himself in the interview as an "infidel" ("unbeliever") and the tide of public opinion turned. . .
He never recanted his views on this subject, however, not even on his deathbed.
Shortly before he passed away in 1926, Burbank wrote a magazine article in which he explained his viewpoint:
"There are without doubt some human beings in every nation, who, according to our present standards of civilization are truly civilized, but grave doubts may be entertained as to any community or any nation who could in any way measure up even to this standard scale of life, where we find more and more ~freedom~, but even man today is far from free. Slaves yet to war, crime and ignorance - the only 'unpardonable sin'. Slaves to unnumbered ancient 'taboos', superstitions, prejudices and fallacies, which one by one are slowly but surely weakening under the clear light of the morning of science; the savior of mankind. Science which has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, there is no national salvation, except through science." ("Why I am an infidel by Luther Burbank", "American Atheist Magazine", December 22, 1903.)
Tens of thousands attended Burbank's funeral in Santa Rosa in 1926. He was laid to rest near his mother beneath a huge Lebanese cedar tree in his front yard. The increase in tolerance of society's world view has caused much of the furor over Burbank's views on religion to fade in light of his contributions to the world of over 800 varieties - and one entire species ("celosia") - of plants.
After all, improving the human condition was the very thing that he set out to accomplish. . .