LUTHER BURBANK 



Under the circumstances, it is your own fault 

 if your trees do not produce good fruit. 



SEEKING NEW VAEIETIES 



An added advantage that Mr. Burbank gains 

 by having many varieties of an orchard fruit 

 growing on a single tree is that the process of 

 hybridizing, through which, as we have seen, new 

 varieties are developed, is thus facilitated. This 

 process consists primarily in fertilizing the flower 

 of one variety with pollen from another. The 

 process is a simple one, particularly in the case 

 of the orchard fruits. Its results are sometimes 

 very remarkable, but of course they are not im- 

 mediately manifest. 



If you examine the flower of apple or plum or 

 cherry, you will see that it bears a cluster of 

 stamens grouped about the central pistil. Each 

 stamen has at its end an anther that when 

 mature bursts open and reveals a quantity of 

 pollen. 



Under natural conditions the pollen is trans- 

 ferred from one flower to another through the 

 agency of bees, and natural hybrids are not in- 

 frequently thus produced. 



All that is necessary to produce cross-fertiliza- 

 tion (where the plants are closely related) is to 

 transfer pollen from one flower to the pistil of 

 another. It will be well to remove the stamens 

 from the flower to be fertilized, with a pair of 

 small forceps, before they have ripened, thus pre- 



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