Sam Robillard, age 14, of Glendale, Ariz., for his question:
WHO WAS LUTHER BURBANK?
Luther Burbank was a great American horticulturist and plant breeder. Among the plants that he developed are the Burbank potato, the Shasta daisy, the spineless cactus and the white blackberry.
Burbank developed many new trees, fruits, flowers, vegetables, grains and grasses. He also improved many plants and trees already known. Many common foods we eat every day come from Burbank's experiments.
Burbank moved to California in 1875 at the age 26 and settled in Santa Rosa. He was born in Lancaster, Mass., and was interested in nature from boyhood. He had studied in the town academy and was intrigued by the works of Charles Darwin.
To help support his widowed mother, Burbank became a gardener. His curiosity led him to experiment with plants. He learned their inherited traits and tried to improve each new crop.
Burbank saved money and bought land for a nursery. In a few years he had a very prosperous business. But he sold his nursery in 1893 and set up an experimental farm at nearby Sebastapol, Calif.
The horticulturist achieved great results by crossing and selections. "Crossing" is uniting two plants to produce a third. He brought about his union by placing the pollen of one flower upon the stigma of another.
"Selections" means choosing the best plants and rejecting the inferior ones. He usually grew thousands of plants in the effort to produce one improved species. All these had to be examined with painstaking care. Sometimes only one specimen from several hundred thousand was approved.
Burbank's first discovery was the potato that bears his name. He planted a seed pod from the rarely blooming Early Rose potato and produced 23 widely varying seedlings. The best was sold to a dealer who named it the Burbank.
Burbank's great Shasta daisy probably aroused more interest than any of his other flowers. The Shasta daisy is the offspring of the English daisy, the wild American daisy and their white Japanese cousin.
A number of berries with commercial value came from Burbank. His famous white blackberry is so transparent that its small seeds can be seen. The enormous Phenomenal berry came from the California wild dewberry and the Cuthbert raspberry, and it was light crimson in color.
Another was the Prumus berry, an offspring of the native California dewberry and the Siberian raspberry.
Burbank's experiments with plums and prunes completely changed the growing of these fruits in California. One of his most interesting creations is the plumcot, offspring of a Japanese plum and the apricot. Its flesh may be yellow, pink, white or crimson.
Burbank also produced a plum that tastes like the Bartlett pear. The famous horticulturist died in 1926 at the age of 77.