268 LUTHER BURBANK 



It appears to be quite the rule that plants 

 habitually propagated by root division or by root- 

 ing stalks or runners tend to lose their power of 

 seed production when long thus cultivated. The 

 pineapple, the banana, the sugar cane, the horse- 

 radish, and the potato, have been previously re- 

 ferred to in this connection. 



All of these, as is well known, are propagated 

 by the cultivator without the use of seed, and it 

 is only under the most unusual conditions that 

 any one of them nowadays produces seed at all. 



I took occasion to emphasize this fact once in 

 a lecture by saying that I would very willingly 

 pay a thousand dollars an ounce for horseradish 

 seed. The joke went the rounds of the papers 

 and hundreds of people all over the country 

 watched their horseradish plants the ensuing sea- 

 son with an idea to gaining the prize. 



Needless to say no one has yet produced the 

 ounce of seeds, or any fraction thereof. 



Of course there are certain disadvantages that 

 will attend the entire giving up of the habit of 

 seed production. 



It is not that the plant propagated exclusively 

 from the roots, buds, grafts, or cuttings degen- 

 erates, as was once thought to be the case. In 

 reality there seems to be no limit to the number 

 of generations through which a plant thus propa- 



