March 7th, 2009: Happy 160th Birthday, Luther Burbank!

In 1859 near Lancaster, Massachusetts, a 10 year-old boy sat on a hill overlooking the railroad tracks as a locomotive pulling several boxcars went by...

The young, intelligent and precocious lad had just read one of Charles Darwin's books and this gave him pause for thought:

"What if one were to apply the principles suggested by Darwin to breed fruits, nuts, vegetables and grain to make them more drought tolerant, insect and disease resistant and to be more prolific bearers?"

That young boy, Luther Burbank, was later to say that he had imagined all those boxcars that he saw that day filled to overflowing with food with which to feed a hungry world.

These days, we're pretty familiar with the concept of "world hunger" but, in 1859, this was a revolutionary thought -- especially for one so young -- and it was that one thought that would give rise to the long, innovative and far-reaching career in plant breeding of Luther Burbank.

Perhaps the boy was destined for greatness... His parents were intellectuals who, not only kept up with the literary happenings of the day (like Darwin's book) but often had professors, writers and scientists over to the house for dinner. One of Burbank's uncles was the director of a natural history museum on a nearby university campus, another was a "truck farmer" and it was while working with the latter that Burbank discovered the "seed potato" that would prove to be one of his greatest experiments.

As a rule, potatoes are easily propagated through division of the tuber but, only once in a great while do any of the resulting plants flower and produce seed. The young Burbank found such a plant one day while working with his uncle, saved and planted the resulting seeds and, by selective breeding through a few generations of the plants, was able to produce a superior tasting potato highly resistant to the "potato blight" which had caused such starvation and resulting mass emmigration from Ireland.

Later on, Burbank sold the rights to his potato for $150 (a tidy sum in those days) to an Idaho potato farmer who renamed it "the Russet". With that money, Burbank moved west to Northern California, Sonoma County, where his two brothers were already living. He was later to call Sonoma County "the chosen spot of all the earth as far as nature is concerned".

Today, the russet potato is largest-selling potato in the world. The reason can be told in two words: "French fries". No other potato has been found which makes better French fries than Burbank's "Russet" Potato. McDonald's has built an empire on it.

Even though you might not know it, when you talk about those people in United States history whose inventions changed the world forever after -- the "movers and shakers", as it were -- Burbank's name ranks right up there with the likes of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

Edison and Ford knew it and that's why they journeyed by train during the Pan Pacific Exhibition held in San Francisco in 1915 to meet Burbank, the fellow inventor they'd been corresponding with for years, face-to-face. 

(Above: The Pan Pacific Exhibition, San Francisco CA, 1915. The domed building in the upper left, the "Palace of Fine Arts", still stands today.)

Harvey Firestone used the shovel of (the, by then, deceased) Luther Burbank to turn the first piece of ground on the site of the Ford Museum and Luther Burbank's nursery office (dismantled and moved in its entirety after Burbank's death) now sits on the grounds of Ford's Greenfield Village Park in Dearborn, Michigan.

Below is one of my favorite photographs of all time. It shows Burbank (center) flanked by Edison (left) and Ford (right) on Burbank's front porch at his house in Santa Rosa, California:

Between these three men (among, of course, others), the world as we know today was profoundly shaped.

But these great inventors (including Harvey Firestone) were not the only friends Burbank had with great names... Included in that list are the likes of Helen Keller and the Paramhansa Yogananda, author of "The Autobiography of a Yogi".

In Chapter 38 of "Autobiography of a Yogi" the Yogananda says of Burbank:

I called Burbank my "American saint." "Behold a man," I quoted, "in whom there is no guile!" His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amidst the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions. The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.

Source: "Autobiography of a Yogi", 1946, Crystal Clarity Publishers.

(Above: Luther Burbank with the Paramhansa Yogananda.)

In his later years, Burbank was shunned and derided by a large segment of the population who had formerly beat a path to his door because of his views on religion in a newspaper interview he gave in which he called himself "an infidel" ("unbeliever").

He never recanted his views on this subject -- even on his deathbed...

Shortly before he passed away in 1926, he wrote an article in which he gave his reasons for calling himself an "infidel":

There are without doubt some human beings in every nation, who, according to our present standards of civilization are truly civilized, but grave doubts may be entertained as to any community or any nation who could in any way measure up even to this standard scale of life, where we find more and more ~freedom~, but even man today is far from free. Slaves yet to war, crime and ignorance --- the only "unpardonable sin." Slaves to unnumbered ancient "taboos," superstitions, prejudices and fallacies, which one by one are slowly but surely weakening under the clear light of the morning of science; the savior of mankind. Science which has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, there is no national salvation, except through science.

(Source: "Why I am an infidel" by Luther Burbank -- American Atheist Magazine -- Publication Date: 22-DEC-03.)

(For myself, I'm not quite certain that it's entirely coincidental that the Paramhansa passed away on Burbank's birthday, March 7th, in 1952...)

It is precisely because of Burbank's innovative, far-looking and eclectic personality -- as well as his lifetime of successful and useful plant breeding -- that, here in California, we celebrate Arbor Day on his birthday, March 7th.

Happy Birthday, Luther -- wherever you are...

(Burbank -- with the same shovel Harvey Firestone used to turn ground on the Ford Museum -- beside his beloved "Shasta Daisies"; a flower that took him 17 years to develop.)

Links:

The Western Sonoma County Historical Society (Burbank's Sebastopol Farm)

Luther Burbank's Home & Gardens (Santa Rosa CA)

Chapter 38 - "Autobiography of a Yogi"