LUTHER BURBANK 



first fault observed in the seedling gladiolus was 

 that the blooms would not stand our California 

 sunshine. 



Under the glare of the California sun, the 

 blooms would wither in a single day, sometimes in 

 a single hour. 



Other serious defects were that the stalks were 

 too slender, and the flowers too far apart on the 

 stalk. Moreover, the flowers were small, they were 

 illy arranged on the stalks, giving an untidy 

 appearance to the plants; and often they were 

 only half open when at their best. 



The colors of many varieties, on the other 

 hand, were fine, it being evident that selection had 

 been made largely for color, by some at least of 

 the earlier experimenters. My first object, then, 

 was to remedy the defects just mentioned rather 

 than to modify the color of the gladioli. In partic- 

 ular I sought, while improving the stalks and the 

 arrangement of flowers on the stalks, to make the 

 petals of the individual blossoms stand out flat 

 and in regular sequence. 



The work progressed along the lines of hybrid- 

 izing and selection with which the reader is 

 already familiar. I hybridized freely, introducing 

 strains of the long neglected natural species to 

 give added virility and stimulate still further vari- 

 ation, thus providing materials for selection. 



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