LUTHER BURBANK 



something of the flavor of the blueberry or huck- 

 leberry of the East, and was especially delicious 

 when cooked. 



It differed as widely as possible from the vile- 

 tasting fruit of one parent and from the insipid, 

 tasteless fruit of the other. 



It should be explained that there were only 

 about twenty of these hybrid plants in a large 

 colony of seedlings. The remaining members of 

 the company were precisely similar to the mother 

 plant on which they grew this being the small, 

 downy species, Solatium villosum thus showing 

 that they were not hybrids. It is probable that 

 there was only a single fruit that had been hybri- 

 dized, although the foreign pollen had been 

 applied to many pistils. 



The entire company of new hybrid Solanums 

 were probably produced from the seeds of a single 

 berry, the other berries having been quite unaf- 

 fected by the attempt at cross-pollenizing. 



But it sufficed to have produced a score or so 

 of hybrids; I should have been delighted with a 

 single one, after all these years of waiting. 

 NEW SPECIES 



Naturally I selected the best two or three indi- 

 viduals among the twenty hybrids the ones ex- 

 celling as to profusion, size, and flavor of berries. 



The seeds of these plants were carefully saved, 



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