Luther Burbank Biography Quotes 13 Report mistakes

Early Life
Luther Burbank was born on March 7, 1849, in Lancaster, Massachusetts. As a boy he was drawn to gardens and the practical mysteries of seeds, soils, and seasons. His formal schooling was limited, but he pursued the literature of science with intensity. Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication especially impressed him; its account of variation and selection convinced Burbank that careful observation and patient breeding could redirect nature toward human needs. Working as a market gardener, he collected a seed ball from an Early Rose potato and raised a group of seedlings. One became the Burbank potato, notable for its high yield and adaptability. He sold the rights to the seed to seedsman James J. H. Gregory, and in 1875 used the proceeds to move west to California, seeking a climate that would extend his growing and crossing seasons.

Santa Rosa and the Experimental Farms
In Santa Rosa, Burbank established a nursery and, over time, an extensive experimental garden. He later added a larger tract at Sebastopol, known as Gold Ridge Farm. There he grew hundreds of thousands of seedlings each year, walking the rows daily, culling ruthlessly, and saving only the rare individuals that matched his aims. Visitors watched him graft, bud, and cross-pollinate with a craftsman's speed and a naturalist's eye. The sheer scale and continuity of his work, along with striking new plants that reached farms and backyards across the country, earned him the popular title "the Wizard of Horticulture".

Methods and Philosophy
Burbank practiced mass selection and wide hybridization. He cross-pollinated within and across species, sometimes using mixed pollen to increase the chance of novelty, and then relied on keen, repeated selection. Influenced by Darwin, he emphasized variability and the power of selection under cultivation. When Mendelian genetics was rediscovered, he welcomed its promise but resisted what he considered rigid interpretation. He kept fewer written records than laboratory breeders preferred, arguing that speed and practical evaluation in the field were essential. This put him at odds with emerging academic geneticists, yet growers and gardeners valued the tangible results of his approach.

Signature Creations
Burbank's work reshaped American horticulture. The Burbank potato later gave rise to the Russet Burbank, which became a standard in the baking and frying trade. He developed the Shasta daisy by combining several daisies over many years to achieve large, bright, weather-tolerant blooms. His fruit innovations included the Santa Rosa plum and the Wickson plum, the latter named for his colleague Edward J. Wickson. He released a white blackberry called Iceberg, introduced new lilies, and brought forward thornless or reduced-spine cacti intended as drought-country fodder. He also pioneered hybrids between plums and apricots, coining the name "plumcot", a forerunner of later interspecific stone fruits.

Allies, Patrons, and Critics
Burbank's circle included scientists, educators, and industrialists who either encouraged or scrutinized his work. Liberty Hyde Bailey praised his accomplishments while urging clearer documentation. David Starr Jordan, the Stanford University president, visited and wrote sympathetically about Burbank's experiments. The Carnegie Institution provided support for a time but withdrew it amid concerns about record-keeping and replicability; that decision reflected a wider debate, led by figures such as William Bateson and other Mendelian geneticists, over the standards for breeding science. The Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries visited and regarded Burbank's gardens as a living theater of variation. Thomas Edison admired Burbank's practical genius and helped draw public attention to the economic value of plant breeding. Late in Burbank's life, Paramahansa Yogananda met him and, deeply moved, later dedicated Autobiography of a Yogi to Burbank as "an American saint", memorializing their friendship in a widely read chapter. In business and policy circles, nursery leaders, including advocates like Paul Stark, cited Burbank's career to argue that plant creators deserved legal protection.

Publications and Outreach
Burbank communicated with the public through nursery catalogs such as New Creations in Fruits and Flowers. In The Training of the Human Plant (1907) he drew analogies between plant cultivation and human development, a book that reflects both his optimistic belief in nurture and the period's now-controversial language. His large-format set Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application (1914, 1915), prepared with collaborators including John Whitson, Robert John, and Henry Smith Williams, presented case studies and photographs from his fields. Later, How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (1921) gave lay readers an illustrated tour of his practice. Through these works and countless interviews, he taught a generation how to think practically about heredity, variation, and selection.

Business Ventures and Policy Impact
Commercializing living inventions proved difficult. A stock-based enterprise organized to market his creations struggled and collapsed, leaving financial and legal tangles that distracted him from breeding. The larger policy lesson was clear to his allies: unlike mechanical inventors, plant breeders had no reliable way to protect or license their innovations. Burbank urged reform, and his story helped build momentum for the Plant Patent Act, which would pass a few years after his death and provide, at last, a limited form of intellectual property for asexually reproduced plants.

Later Years and Legacy
Burbank remained active in Santa Rosa well into his seventies. He expressed independent views on science and religion, advocating tolerance and reason in public statements that drew wide attention. He died on April 11, 1926, in Santa Rosa, and was laid to rest on the grounds of his home. His experimental garden and Gold Ridge Farm have been preserved as historic sites, and a U.S. postage stamp later honored him among notable Americans. Far beyond memorials, though, his legacy endures in the everyday success of crops and ornamentals that trace to his fields: the Russet Burbank potato, the Shasta daisy, the Santa Rosa and Wickson plums, the white blackberry, hardy lilies, plumcots, and drought-oriented cacti. Bridging the era from Darwin's insights to modern breeding, Luther Burbank showed how observation, imagination, and relentless selection could reshape the plant world and, with it, the possibilities of American agriculture.

Our collection contains 13 quotes who is written by Luther, under the main topics: Wisdom - Truth - Parenting - Nature - Science.

• 1914 Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application (Book)
• 1914 The Training of the Human Plant (Essay)
• 1908 New Creations in Plant Life (Book)
• 1907 How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (Book)