58 LUTHER BURBANK 



Of course plums that present this anomaly 

 cannot be propagated from the seed. But in 

 this regard they do not differ from a number 

 of cultivated plants, the banana and the sugar 

 cane, and many others. And for that matter 

 it must be recalled that very few orchard 

 fruits are reproduced from the seed. The 

 favorite varieties of apples and pears are so 

 blended that they do not breed true from the 

 seed. If you were to plant the seed of a Baldwin 

 apple, a Bartlett pear, or a Sugar prune, there 

 is only the remotest chance that you would 

 produce a seedling that would resemble the 

 parent. 



Yet apples and pears and prunes are prop- 

 agated year after year by means of buds and 

 grafts. The same method of propagation would 

 of course suffice for seedless plums. 



It would still be possible, however, to produce 

 new varieties of seedless plums by using the 

 pollen of these varieties to fertilize the flowers 

 of other plums that were stoneless but not 

 seedless. 



The seedlings from such a cross would tend 

 to vary in successive generations, as all hybrids 

 do. A certain number of the offspring of the 

 second and later generations would doubtless be 

 seedless, and it would thus be possible to develop 



