LUTHER BURBANK 



a brier patch will readily conceive that the pro- 

 duction of a thornless brier is a work of genuine 

 importance. 



Mr. Burbank's thornless blackberries, as al- 

 ready stated, have absolutely smooth stems. 

 There is not the remnant of a thorn anywhere 

 about them. They are as smooth as pussy-willows. 

 They are the forerunners of a race of thornless 

 brambles that will doubtless supplant the old 

 thorny kind everywhere in the near future. 



The parent form with which Mr. Burbank 

 worked in producing these anomalous plants was 

 a nearly thornless but otherwise worthless dew- 

 berry that was discovered growing wild in North 

 Carolina. The botanist who discovered the plant 

 gathered some of its fruit and sent it to Mr. Bur- 

 bank, thinking he might care to experiment with 

 it. The fruit in question was of poor quality and, 

 as in the case of the white blackberry, it was neces- 

 sary to breed altogether new qualities into it. 



The problem, of course, was how to retain and 

 accentuate the tendency to thornlessness of plant 

 that was the sole recommendation of this par- 

 ticular variety of dewberry, and at the same time 

 to place berries of good commercial qualities on 

 these plants. 



When the thornless dewberry was hybridized 

 with other blackberries, the hybrid offspring 

 were all thorny, just as the offspring of the black 

 and the white blackberries were all black. But 

 thornless progeny reappeared in the second gen- 

 eration, and some of these bore fruit of a better 



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