114 LUTHER BURBANK 



petals have been cut, as just described, will not 

 attract the bees, and would almost certainly not 

 be fertilized at all if our experimental polleniza- 

 tion should for some reason fail. 



TIME THE LIMITING FACTOR 



But even when restricted to the essentials, 'the 

 process takes time ; and although some thousands 

 of hand pollinations are done annually in my 

 gardens and orchard, yet, as intimated, we try 

 to leave the bulk of this work to the bees. Of 

 course, these otherwise admirable helpers make 

 no distinction between different varieties of blos- 

 soms, passing freely from one tree to another, 

 regardless of the variety; but they usually con- 

 fine their attentions on any given day to trees of 

 a single species; that is to say, they do not 

 ordinarily pass fyom cherry blossoms to the 

 blossoms of the plum or almond, even if all are 

 in season. They seem to prefer not to mix their 

 sweets. So they do not distribute pollen to the 

 wrong flowers as often as might be supposed. 



Where pollenizing experiments are to be made 

 on a larger scale, I sometimes place a branch of 

 a cherry tree in full bloom among the branches 

 of the tree of another variety, with which I wish 

 to effect hybridization. The bees then transfer 

 the pollen from the borrowed limb to the flowers 



