272 LUTHER BURBANK 



hardiness of blossom, that these may aid us in 

 making early selection among our seedlings. 



SEEKING AID FROM THE PLUM 



I have said that the plant experimenter who 

 attempts to give us a race of apricots with resist- 

 ant blossoms can perhaps expect little aid from 

 crossing the existing varieties of apricot. 



Fortunately, however, there are possibilities 

 of wider hybridizations that give far greater 

 promise. 



There are varieties of Japanese plums that 

 will stand hard freezing every morning from the 

 time the buds start until the fruit is of good size. 

 With ordinary plums such freezing absolutely 

 prohibits the development of fruit, and the apri- 

 cot, as a rule, cannot withstand even a single 

 light frost. 



The resistant quality of some of the Japanese 

 plums, then, marks it as a plant having in pre- 

 eminent measure the precise quality that the 

 apricot most conspicuously lacks. 



So the question arose as to whether it may not 

 be possible to hybridize the apricot and the Jap- 

 anese plum and by so doing breed into the apricot 

 strain the quality of hardiness, just as we have 

 seen specific qualities bred into other plants by 

 similar hybridization. 



