Transforming the World of Plants

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 14, 6 October 1909, Page 39

Transforming the World of Plants

The wonder-work of Luther Burbank, which shows how man can govern evolution

By

GARRETT P. SERVISS

' x | \ EHOLD. I have given you every 1 ▼ herb bearing seed which is upon \ the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree bearing seed.” And so to man at the same time was dominion assured over every living thing which is upon the earth. Why, then, should anybody marvel at the achievements of Luther Burbank? If we do marvel, it is because we have not comprehended the real meaning nor the extent of control over the life of this globe, which is the birthright of humanity. After a visit in California to Mr Burhank’s wonder-gardens—as people persist in deeming them —and after intimate talks with their master, who has no use or time for mere curiosity-seekers, the only marvel I can see is the fact that that man should have been so tardy in beginning to direct the infinite life-forces placed at his command. The Burbank experiments prove that the plant-world is plastic to human touch, and that we may shape it at our will. We hold a master hand in the game of evolution. We need not go on generation after gen-

elation eating the same fruits with the same flavours, smelling the same fragrances. admiring the same flowers with the same colours arrayed in the same order; we need not forever make our bread from the same grains grown under

the same conditions that have limited tillage and husbandry in the past! There is no fiat compelling us to dwell as long as our race shall endure under the same rooftrees; the face of the landscape may be made a mirror of the human mind, not simply in the alternation of cultivated fields and woodlands, and the artificial arrangement of nature’s forms, but in the character of the forms themselves.

The shapes shall he of our choosing, ami the colours, the perfumes and the flavours snail reflect our preferences. An almost religious reverence has hitherto hedged alauit the com-option of “species."’ The old idea was that species

were fixed from the beginning by special act of the Creator; Darwinism taught us that species arose only through slow ages of change by the gradual process of natural selection accumulating its effects for thousands anil even millions of years; but Luther Burbank shows that man can produce species, and do it in a dozen summers. All this was implied in the declaration

of the Hebrew writer concerning the gift of dominion to Adam; hut how slow we have been to understand it! Now, however. the proof lies open in those Californian gardens.

CAC TI s BLOSSOM.

It has been averred that these experiments have upset cherished scientific doctrines. but it would Im* more correct to say that they have flowed all around certain conceptions of formal science, leaving them like islands in the stream, and thus revealing their inadequacy and the partial character of such truth as they do contain. Let us see what Mr Burbank has actually done. But first a few words alxmt the man himself, for he is certainly one of the most remarkable men living. In straightforward simplicity of character he excels all the distinguished men 1 have ever met. In that simplicity is the evidence of rare power. Only a man of that kind can get close to nature, and in his closeness to nature lies his whole secret, lie does not create, but he guides nature in creating. According to the testimony of the men of science who have

visited him—and many of the most famous have lately made that pilgrimage—his insight into the latent forces and tendencies of plant-life is truly marvellous, amounting to genius of a high and unique order. In this work of producing new plants, as in every other form of human endeavour, it is the personality of the worker that is of the first importance. Having shattered a plant by “hybridisation” into a myriad of variant forms. he runs his eye over the multitudinous product, in which the individuals are as different as the faces in a crowd, and with amazing quickness and sureness of judgment picks out a few, a very few—sometimes but a single one from among thousands—and decrees that these only shall live and have an opportunity to propagate their kind, while all the others go to the brush-heap! Horticulturists with a life-

time of experience find themselves unable to imitate, or even to understand, this swift intuition. It is what has given Mr Burbank the popular reputation of a scientific- “wizard,” at which he is goodnaturedly amused. When he made his famous "white blackberry,” he selected just one plant out of the sixty-five thousand which sprang from the crossings! Anybody can cross plants and get variations, but it is the subsequent selection that forms the test. An army alone is

not sufficient to win a victory, there must also be the discriminating and directing eye of a Caesar or a Napoleon. The power of insight has been given to few as fully as it has been given to Luther Burbank, and therein lies the explanation of the strange fact that he, in

half a human lifetime, has done more to change the forms of plant-life than all the farmers, gardeners, horticulturists, florists, and savants since the beginning c f history.

Tie is a philosopher, and at heart a poet, but not a writer for lack of time. What little he has written, and all that he says in conversation, reveal surprising breadth and boldness of thought. He is not afraid to use his imagination, although he never loses the distinction between what is imaginative and what is real. His thoughts are not confined to the mere details of work, but he correlates them with the results and hypotheses of modern science. Meditating on the recent wonderful advances in the theory of electricity he sees their connection with the facts of plant-life, and speaks of: “A Kinetic Creation—a Universe of organised lightning.” He gets so close to nature in his dealings with the vital forces of the vegetable kingdom that he feels that life is everywhere; that intelligence is not something apart; that the universe cannot be made up of mere dead matter moved by forces outside itself, but that it is a universe of force alone. His favourite author is Emerson. 1 was sure of that before he told me. ‘‘Emerson,” he says, ‘‘suits all moods. It seems in reading him as if Natnre were speaking instead of Emerson.” He feels that Emerson foresaw many of the things that his experiments have brought to light. He showed me a brown oak-leaf, carefully preserved between sheets of silk piper, that came from a tree at the Concord philosopher’s old home. In his earlier years he knew Emerson, for he was born in Massachusetts in 1549, and was twenty-six when he went to California. A man’s surroundings become a part of himself, and partake more or less of his character. This must be especially true of such a man as Luther Burbank, engaged in such work as his. California was made for him, and he California. He needed its wonderful climate, its rich and varied soil, its undeveloped, limitless possibilities; and it needed him with his power to bring out the latent forces of nature. Santa Rosa, his chosen home, some fifty or sixty miles north of the Golden (rate, is a typical Californian country town, full of gardens, flowers, foliage, birds, and cool alcoves inviting the siesta. On its outskirts, looking oft to a far range of hills, is his cottage, buried in vines and blossoms, with gardens and experiment-grounds behind it. Mr Burbank is in the ripe prime of life, at fifty-six years. He is not married, and with him lives his mother a New England woman, sprung from the Rosses and the Burpees, and now ninety-two years of age. She is fond of going out into the gardens to enjoy the floral creations of her son. It was in her garden, at Luenburg. Massachusetts, thirty-two years ago, that he brought forth the’firstling of his genius, the now famous Burbank potato. And now what, •precisely, are the feats of Luther Burbank, about which all the world is vaguely talking? Tie is giving to mankind new plants, new fruits, new flowers, new trees, such as have never been known before. Some of these, it is true, are only varieties, akin to those that everybody has seen in gardens and cultivated fields—for in a timid, half-hearted way man has long been imparting a faint impress of his ideas to the plant world. But the more remarkable ones are so different from any pre-existing forms that

they can only be described as new creations. Some of them bridge the supposed impassable chasms between species, and- between genera, and in every way they indicate that there is practically no limit to the number and variety of new plant-forms that can be pioduced by artificial crossing and selection.

Take, for instance, the “plumcot”; its name hints at its ancestry, for it is the offspring of the plum and the apricot. It is absolutely a new kind of fruit. The very flavour and taste of it have hitherto been unknown to the human palate. When I visited Mr. Burbank’s experimental farm at Sebastopol, near Santa Rosa, toward the end of May last, there were rows of trees hanging full of green plumeots, but, unfortunately for my desire to taste this new fruit, in this new garden of Eden, the plumcot does not ripen until July. So I could only admire it amid its rich covering of foliage, and feast my eyes upon the spectacle of trees gleaming with showers of fruit, whose kind nature did not know until the genius of man summoned it into being! It is only four years since the first plumcot turned its downy cheek to the sun, and brought into the world a new pleasure for gourmands, but already it promises to be the progenitor of a distinguished line of descendants as varied among themselves as any family of fruits already known. Not only in their flavour, but in the colour of their pulp—now white, now pink, now red, now yellow—and in their way of bearing their pits, plumcots differ in variety, as apples and other of nature’s own fruits differ. This last phrase should not, however, lead anyone to suppose that the plumcot is, in any sense, an unnatural product. Mr. Burbank did not create the tendencies that gave birth to it; he simply discovered and guided those tendencies, and, while nature might never spontaneously have turneed them in the direction which he chose, yet, once set in motion, nature’s forces flowed in the new course as freely as would a stream whose accustomed channel had been dammed up and another way opened for its waters. How Mr. Burbank accomplishes these things I shall endeavour to explain a little later. Another surprising product of this kind is the “primus” berry. There is an unfortunate artificiality about this name which is apt to give the. reader the impression that the fruit described by it is merely a horticultural variety, instead of being, what it actually is, a new and distinct species of berry, as fit. to stand in a rank by itself on account of individuality of flavour and habit as is the raspberry or the blackberry. In fact, though differing from them both, the primus berry is the result of a cross between a raspberry from Siberia and a blackberry, or dewberry. from Californa. It stands on the records, with scientific recognition, as the first fixed species of the rubus tribe ever artificially produced. Yet not long ago there was a dictum, much repeated in scientific circles, to the effect that it is impossible for man to produce new species. And that is not the only highly respected dictum that has gone the same way. True science, however, preserves its credit by promptly discarding exploded theories and loyally accepting established facts. Such ‘ facts are the plumcot and the primus berry. The result of a cross between different species is usually spoken of as a hybrid. Mr. Burbank has many flourishing hybrids, some of them far more beautiful and more useful than either of the species from whose hidden stores of undeveloped tendencies and latent life-forces they were brought forth. He has in this manner created two new species of walnuts, each of which, in its own way, may bring about a revolution in the world of trees. One of these is the “paradox” walnut (pity, again, that such a name should have been necessary), whose first wonderful feature is the swiftness of its growth. It has been pronounced to be the fastest-grow-ing tree in the temperate zone. There is a row of these trees bordering the walk in front of Mr. Burbank’s home, some of which, in thirteen or fourteen years, have developed trunks two feet in diameter, while their broad-spreading tops cast around them the shadows of giants. Yet, contrary to what is almost invariably found with fast-growing trees, these great walnuts are remarkable for the hardness and durability of their wool! This has been compared to lignum vitae for solidity, while it pos-

sesses a most beautiful colour, and is in every respect suitable and excellent for cabinet-making and for buildingtimber. This' .new kind of tree is capable- itself of developing improved varieties without losing its distinctive characteristics, and Mr. Burbank anticipates that it will give rise to many novel cabinet woods, and will add immensely to the timber wealth of the country after it shall have been widely introduced and cultivated. Now, note a most significant thing. The paradox walnut is not much of a nut-bearer, but its half-brother, the “royal” walnut, loads itself with amazing crops of large, sweet nuts. Both have the same mother, the native Californian black walnut, but the father of the paradox was the English walnut, and that of the royal the Eastern black walnut. The first exhibited at the beginning surprising vegetative energy, and was urged in the direction of growth at the expense of the reproductive power; the second showed great reproductive power, and was specially developed along that line. The consequence is that two new kinds of walnut trees have been brought into existence, one of which offers the world an immense addition to its supply o f valuable timber and beautiful cabinet wood, while the other is a food-producer, yielding nuts increased four or five times in size and enormously in number. There appears to be no detail in the life and growth of plants that is beyond the reach of human interference and that cannot be made to follow the dictates of man’s wishes. Once in a while Mr. Burbank discovers that he has gone too’far. and that there is a wisdom garnered from ages of experience in some of nature's arrangements which cannot be violated with impunity. If nuts had thinner shells, for instance, it would be possible to dispense with nut-crackers. Accordingly Mr. Burbank once bred the shells of English walnuts so thin that they were easily broken. This proved a great boon to the birds, and they quickly got all the nuts, for they were up first in the morning and had to waste no time in climbing or shaking trees. So the process was reversed and the nuts were bred back again into the protection of thick shells. A similar thing happened when Mr Burbank bred the prickly husks off chestnuts. He found that that kind of chestnut would only answer for a birdless land, and he had to put the burrs on again. Nature has spent countless thousands of years in bringing about some of these adjustments of conditions to environment, which man can upset in a season or two if he finds it to his advantage to do so. But the reader may naturally ask: “How can Mr. Burbank, or any other human being, cause nuts to thieken or thin their shells at his bidding ?” The answer sounds somewhat paradoxical: “He can do it because the world is so very old and so very full of life.”

In the eons of its past existence the kingdom of plants has stored up innumerable impressions derived from its ever changing environments. These impressions have produced hereditary tendencies (tendencies toward their own perpetuation) the greater number of which remain latent, and at present invisible, like photographic negatives' not yet dippied into the developing tray. There is not room enough in the whole world for all to manifest themselves simultaneously. If they were all materialised at once, a thousand earths would not suffice to hold the countless forms that are locked up, unseen, in plants. Only those are visible about us which have found favouring circumstances, and which upon the whole are best fitted for their present environments. But the latent tendencies though held back, are not destroyed or obliterated. They are like so many memories stamped upon the brain, covered up under a flood of later impressions, apparently forgotten, yet ready, when the mystic chord is touched, to spring into vivid prominence. Thus it happens that through some change of environment, of food, or soil, or climate, a concealed hereditary tendency, the sleeping memory of some former state of existence, awakes in a plant, and what the gardener or the horticulturist calls a “sport” is produced. The plant affected becomes like a black sheep in a snowy flock. It has heard a far-off ancestral voice and started backward at the call.

Now, ordinarily, these natural sports and variations are short-lived. There is no room or place for them in the existing order of things; they are not armed to engage in the struggle for existence;

they not “fitted" to survive; th* favouring circumstance that brought them forth was but a flitting gleam, and with its ’departure they are. left unsupported.; • - - Yet here intelligence sees its opportunity to interfere. Man can govern the environment for the plant. He can remove unfriendly circumstances, and can eliminate the struggle for existence. Under his fostering care the exceptional plant, which has harked back to ancient traditions of its race, and assumed a form strange to ita contemporaries, may be encouraged, stimulated, and developed until it becomes an established species. To apply this in the case of the walnuts and their shells, what Mr. Burbank had to do was to find some nut in which a tendency toward thinness of shell was exhibited, and then by selection and cultivation develop it into an independent species. Nuts have not always needed the protection of thick armour, and the memory of that fact is still impressed upon their life cells. But this is only half the story. We have likened the latent hereditary tendencies in the underworld of sleeping forms that lies beneath the face of nature to undeveloped impressions on a photographic plate.. The simile is by no means perfect, yet it may serve to carry us a step farther. Suppose that a numb:r of photographic negatives impressed with the latent images of more or less different scenes are superposed to make a positive. The result will be a composite picture bearing some of the features characteristic of each of the negative impressions, yet, as a whole, unlike any one of them. The various features of plants may bo blended and intermingled by the piocess of crossing, and the resulting forms will differ from any seen in nature. But in the case of plants a far greater variety, and much wider departures from the original types, are obtained than composite photography could show. Moreover. while the photographer by superposing his negatives gets but one composite picture, the experimenter with plants by a single crossing of types may produce an astonishing variety of forms. He finds that he has opened a Pandora’s box, and the imagination is unable to foreshadow the strange things that escape. Thus when Mr. Burbank crosses two speeies of walnuts and plants the new nuts so produced, the seedlings that spring up are absolutely amazing in the variety of forms that they exhibit. The leaves of some resemble those of one parent, the leaves of others resemble those of the other parent; still others have leaves of an entirely novel and unexpected shape, not only imitating every known, and apparently every possible, type of walnut foliage, but even aping the foliage of the oak, or the leaves of berry bearing shrubs! And all this is the result of a simple crossing of life-currents, in which these tendencies would have remained latent but for such crossing. The act of crossing, Mr. Burbank finds, sets the latent forces free, “gets the species into a state of perturbation, or wabble,” of which he takes advantage for guiding the life-tendencies in directions chosen by himself.