897tgigvib
Garden Master
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2012
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Luther Burbank
He was quite the plant breeder. His era was from 1849 to 1926. He was a truck farmer back east, and his first major new developed crop was a russett potato. He was a true naturalist at heart. Something like 1879 he moved to Santa Rosa Ca., where I was raised. Set his roots there. Bought land there for a plant breeding nursery, and then bought more land in nearby Sebastopol for a larger farm. He worked transferring a lot of pollen feverishly right up to the day he died. Strawberries, prickless prickly pears, gladiolus, callas, prunes, grapes, daisies, bramble berries, huechera, oh, almost name it he developed it.
Amazingly, he did not think Darwin was right about how evolution worked, but rather believed Lamarcke was right! But yes, he believed evolution was a real concept. His first wife left him, then he remarried a much younger gal who helped his efforts along.
When I was a kid growing up in Santa Rosa I used to go to the Burbank gardens. A lot. One time our third grade class went there on a field trip. Old frail Mrs. Burbank was upstairs in the carriage house which was where she lived. The main house was, and is, a museum. She was actually standing holding a walker with a nurse helping her. Mrs. Burbank waved at me, and said to her nurse, there's that young man who comes here so often.
Having children come to the gardens was an event the Burbanks always encouraged.
Ole Burbank had some political views, you betcha. They were an unusual, I think an impossible mix of views, but he was adamant. Close friends with Henry Ford, opposed to organized labor, yet he was sometimes a registered socialist. Burbank quotes are, well some are famous, but one always sticks to my craw. He said, "No great thing ever comes of the work of an employee".
I have always tried to prove his words there wrong. Nevertheless, Burbank is indeed one of my heroes. He talked to plants, back in the days of a hundred years ago. Like the plants were children, in school. His Walnut trees were treated as young athletes having a race for 12 years.
There is a town down south called Burbank. Not sure if he ever went there. But he loved Santa Rosa's name as it was.
He was quite the plant breeder. His era was from 1849 to 1926. He was a truck farmer back east, and his first major new developed crop was a russett potato. He was a true naturalist at heart. Something like 1879 he moved to Santa Rosa Ca., where I was raised. Set his roots there. Bought land there for a plant breeding nursery, and then bought more land in nearby Sebastopol for a larger farm. He worked transferring a lot of pollen feverishly right up to the day he died. Strawberries, prickless prickly pears, gladiolus, callas, prunes, grapes, daisies, bramble berries, huechera, oh, almost name it he developed it.
Amazingly, he did not think Darwin was right about how evolution worked, but rather believed Lamarcke was right! But yes, he believed evolution was a real concept. His first wife left him, then he remarried a much younger gal who helped his efforts along.
When I was a kid growing up in Santa Rosa I used to go to the Burbank gardens. A lot. One time our third grade class went there on a field trip. Old frail Mrs. Burbank was upstairs in the carriage house which was where she lived. The main house was, and is, a museum. She was actually standing holding a walker with a nurse helping her. Mrs. Burbank waved at me, and said to her nurse, there's that young man who comes here so often.
Having children come to the gardens was an event the Burbanks always encouraged.
Ole Burbank had some political views, you betcha. They were an unusual, I think an impossible mix of views, but he was adamant. Close friends with Henry Ford, opposed to organized labor, yet he was sometimes a registered socialist. Burbank quotes are, well some are famous, but one always sticks to my craw. He said, "No great thing ever comes of the work of an employee".
I have always tried to prove his words there wrong. Nevertheless, Burbank is indeed one of my heroes. He talked to plants, back in the days of a hundred years ago. Like the plants were children, in school. His Walnut trees were treated as young athletes having a race for 12 years.
There is a town down south called Burbank. Not sure if he ever went there. But he loved Santa Rosa's name as it was.
