LUTHER BURBANK 



THE BUKBANK POTATO 



Doubtless you have eaten the Burbank potato, 

 although you may not know it by that name. Mr. 

 Burbank developed this new variety when he was 

 a very young man, and it has come to be grown so 

 universally that most people who cultivate it know 

 nothing of its origin. The Department of Agri- 

 culture estimated that up to 1906 not less than 

 seventeen million dollars' worth of Burbank po- 

 tatoes had been grown in the United States. This 

 was Mr. Burbank ? s first important plant develop- 

 ment, and for that reason also it has exceptional 

 interest. 



Unlike many of his later developments, the new 

 potato was produced without the necessity for a 

 long series of preliminary experiments. It was, 

 in a sense, a discovery rather than a creation, and 

 as such it has added interest for the amateur, 

 inasmuch as it suggests the possibility of finding 

 in any garden extraordinary things if only we 

 search for them. 



The extraordinary thing that Mr. Burbank 

 found in his Massachusetts garden when he was 

 scarcely more than a boy (it happened in 1873) 

 was a seed ball growing on one of his potato 

 vines. 



Everyone knows that the potato is propagated 

 by planting pieces of the tuber itself, and that 

 ordinarily the potato vine does not produce seed. 

 In very rare instances, however, a seed cluster 

 does form, but it requires the imaginative mind 



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