Luther Burbank
62 quotes
Biography
"Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind."
"Those who are making history seldom have time to record it."
"Nature has time without limit, but man has immediate need for better and still better food, houses and clothing, and our present state of civilization depends largely upon the improvements of plants and animals which have consciously and half-consciously been made by man, and future civilization must more and more depend upon scientific efforts to this end."
"A knowledge of Mendelism is recognized by me as only the ABC to the broader knowledge of heredity necessary for success in animal and plant improvement, and all variations and all mutations of every nature are responses to environment which, by repetition and combination, are slowly but surely fixed in heredity and at last made tangible, most often through the crossing of varieties, species, or genera, either by nature or that part of nature called man."
"Sex is not a necessary attribute of all living things.. [it is] a most necessary attribute if progress in evolution of new forms is to occur, as they have progressed through the ages and as we now see them progressing on this planet."
"Power to vary in plants or animals is itself a feature as readily transmissible as is stability of character. The quality of varying to meet varying environments is therefore one of the hereditary traits which the plant breeder must consider, and which may itself be extended or overcome by the processes of crossing and selection."
"It is increasingly necessary to impress the fact that there are two distinct lines in the improvement of any race: the environment which brings individuals up to their best possibilities; the other, ten thousand times more important and effective, selection of the best individuals through a series of generations."
"To the gardener who goes about his task with the right spirit must every plant appear as the most wonderful of laboratories in which miracles of transformation, outmatching the utmost feats of the most skillful conjurer, are being performed every hour.<!--p.75-->"
"The richest soil that was ever prepared would not grow a single blade of grass or the tiniest Weed if that soil were absolutely dry. ...There must be water in the soil to dissolve out and transfer its elements in order that the rootlets of the plant shall be able to make the slightest use of these elements. ...But ...a plant may grow and thrive for a time quite without the presence of soil if its roots are placed in water. ... some of the richest soils in the world are those that are absolutely barren and fully merit the designation of desert lands because water is lacking<!--pp.76-78-->"
"The essential basis of life itself, namely, , is a substance composed largely of water and having the physical constitution of a viscid liquid.<!--p.77-->"
"In manufacturing food for its own cells, the plant is producing a supply of food that will be available for the sustenance of animal cells also. Thus the entire animal World may be said to be a vast parasitic colony as absolutely dependent upon the vegetable colony for its essential food supplies as any other parasite is dependent upon its host.<!--p.86-->"
"The most interesting thing in the world, from the standpoint of animal economy—which of course includes human economy—is the wonderful laboratory or factory of the plant...<!--p.86-->"
"The plant laboratories in which this wonderful and vitally essential transformation is effected are chiefly located in the leaf of the plant... the thoughtful person must regard this structure—the most ordinary green leaf of tree or shrub or vine or the tiniest blade of grass—as in some respects the most wonderful thing in the world.<!--pp.86-87-->"
"When the wise plant developer goes into his garden or orchard... his eyes turn always first and foremost to the leaves...<!--p.87-->"
"No one at all understands why it is possible for the plant cell that bears within its substance one of these green bodies to combine certain inorganic elements into nutritious foods, a feat that no human chemist can perform.<!--p.90-->"
"Do not be cross with the child; you cannot afford it. If you are cultivating a plant, developing it into something finer and nobler, you must love it, not hate it; be gentle with it, not abusive; be firm, never harsh. I give the plants upon which I am at work in a test, whether a single one or a hundred thousand, the best possible environment. So should it be with a child, if you want to develop it in right ways. Let the children have music, let them have pictures, let them have laughter, let them have a good time; not an idle time but one full of cheerful occupation. Surround them with all the beautiful things you can. Plants should be given sun and air and the blue sky; give them to your boys and girls. ...for all the years. We cannot treat a plant tenderly one day and harshly the next; they cannot stand it. Remember that you are training not only for to-day, but for all the future, for all posterity.<!--pp. 32-33-->"
"As a young man he developed the Burbank potato in his native Massachusetts and used the proceeds to bankroll his larger, lifetime operation in California."
"He introduced almost every "new" trait by directed immigration—that is, by importing favorable features from other lineages through hybridization."
"Burbank... wished to improve humans exactly as he made better plants... [he] outlined a four-step process... [but] actually accomplished all his feats with only two of his four steps... Ironically, he rooted the humanistic and "liberal" heart of his eugenics program in the two illusory processes... Burbank... advocated Lamarckian inheritance... Nature, in the wild or in horticulture, works on Darwinian, not Lamarckian, principles. Acquired characters are not inherited, and desired improvement occurs by rigorous selection with elimination of the vast majority from the reproductive stream. Burbank could develop new breeds, but he could not alter the rules. He actually worked by extensive hybridization and uncompromising selection, though his own success fooled him into thinking that nature helped his efforts by Lamarckian inheritance. The Lamarckian theme sets the keystone for Burbank's liberal eugenics, based upon the genetic effects of good nurturing. The fallacy of Lamarckianism marks the utter failure of his arguement.<!--pp. 289-294 -->"
"The final and most important factor of Burbank's success is the inherent personal genius of the man, his innate sympathy with nature, aided by the practical education in plant biology derived from thirty years of constant study and experiment which enable him to perceive correlations and outcomes of plant growth which seem to have been visible to no other man."
"His principles are in full harmony with the teachings of science. His methods are hybridization and selection in the broadest sense and on the largest scale. One very illustrative example of his methods must suffice to convey an idea of the work necessary to produce a new race of superlative excellency. Forty thousand blackberry and raspberry hybrids were produced and grown until the fruit matured. Then from the whole lot a single variety was chosen as the best. It is now known under the name of "Paradox." All others were uprooted with their crop of ripening berries, heaped up into a pile twelve feet wide, fourteen feet high and twenty-two feet long, and burned. Nothing remained of that expensive and lengthy experiment, except the one parent plant of the new variety. Similar selections and similar amount of work have produced the famous plums, the brambles and the blackberries, the Shasta daisy, the peach-almond, the improved blueberries, the hybrid lilies, and the many other valuable fruits and garden-flowers that have made the fame of Burbank and the glory of horticultural California."
"A unique, great genius!. To see him was the prime reason of my coming to America. He works to definite ends. He ought to be not only cherished but helped. Unaided he cannot do his best. He should be as well known and as widely appreciated in California as among scientific men in Europe."
"After a short experience in an agricultural implement manufactory he began market gardening and seed growing in a small way, one of his first and therefore now best known achievements being the development of the Burbank potato from a selected seedling of the Early Rose. On October 1, 1875, he removed from Massachusetts to Santa Rosa, California, where he has lived ever since devoting himself to the production of new forms of plants by crossing and selection."
"For the sake of one great advance, he can afford to burn thousands of plants of which the combinations of inheritable character show little or no improvement over the parent stock."
"Burbank is proud to acknowledge that his success rests on the science of Darwin..."