Luther Burbank: Plant Wizard

Many of the innovations that are so much a part of our lives can be associated with certain individuals whose brilliant minds and tireless efforts helped to make possible things we take for granted today. For example, what would the automobile be without the efforts of Henry Ford or the light bulb without the genius of Thomas Edison? A contemporary of Ford and Edison by the name of Luther Burbank was a man of great intellect and tremendous work ethic who helped to transform the horticultural world through the development of new plants. Having introduced over 800 new varieties, Burbank is to thank for many of the plants that we still enjoy in our lives today. This article is a brief synopsis of his life and accomplishments.

Luther Burbank was born in 1849 in Lancaster, Massachusetts and grew up in the age of Mendel and Darwin. Burbank was the second youngest in a family with 15 children and was schooled at Lancaster Academy where he received the equivalent of a high school education. He was an avid reader and developed his love for plants in his mother’s large garden. At the age of 21, Burbank inherited a modest sum of money from his father’s estate and used it to buy 17 acres of land near Lunenburg, Massachusetts. It was on this plot of land that he first practiced what now is often referred to the "art and science" of plant breeding.

Burbank’s success as a plant breeder was remarkable given the fact he began his work before the earlier findings of Gregor Mendel on the nature of inheritance were rediscovered by the scientific community. Instead, Burbank was influenced greatly by Charles Darwin, and it was his discovery of the "Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication" that led to his interest in developing new plants. He began his work in 1870 and just a year later introduced the Burbank potato which was resistant to the fungus that caused the blight epidemic that led to the Irish potato famine of a few years earlier. This variety mutated to produce a tuber with a russeted skin which led to the introduction Russet Burbank potato which, 125 years after its introduction, is still the mainstay of the Idaho potato industry.

Burbank sold the rights to his new potato for $150 and used the money to migrate to Santa Rosa, California where he purchased a small plot of land. It was there as well as in nearby Sebastopol, California that he did the bulk of his work and achieved worldwide fame as a "plant wizard." Burbank was a man of boundless energy and uncanny insight. Driven by the desire to improve plants and help feed the world, his experimental plots were virtual "plant factories" with thousands of different experiments being carried on at one time. Burbank was a supporter of the theory of genetic variation which held that inheritance of characteristics in living things was determined by acquired characteristics. He focused his work on hybridization and grafting as he attempted to merge the desirable qualities of several plants into one. He was a tireless worker who would not accept defeat easily as evidenced by the fact he made and evaluated 65,000 crosses in route to developing a white blackberry. During his career, he developed an astounding 238 new varieties of fruit, 26 new vegetables and 91 new ornamental plants. The most notable of the latter probably is the Shasta daisy.

Luther Burbank was an icon of his generation and was said to be the most widely photographed man of his era. Many notable individuals of the day (e.g., Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Helen Keller) posed to have their pictures taken with this unique individual with disheveled hair and dirt on his hands and, in all cases, they came to him. Burbank relied on the press to help promote his new creations, but shunned them at the same time to retain his privacy. He once was quoted as saying "I think I am about 200 percent overrated."

Burbank’s legacy lives on today in the many plants he created, as well as the in the Plant Protection Act that was passed by Congress in 1930, four years after his death. This legislation provided for patent rights on new plant varieties and made it more financially appealing for others to carry on the work of men such as Burbank. In deference to this creative genius, 16 plant patents were granted to him posthumously. Legend has it that Burbank’s first and most significant new plant (the Burbank potato) was the result of discovery of a rare seed pod in a small planting of potatoes in his Massachusetts garden. We will never know what might have happened had Burbank not found that seed pod or if the genetic variability that is a part of nature had not resulted in the gene combination that produced his famous potato. But we do know that because of Luther Burbank and others like him there (seemingly) is no end to the variety of horticultural plants available to us today.

David Trinklein
Associate Professor Plant Sciences