THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 171 



a Japanese agent in 1883.' The fruit of this variety proved to be very 

 superior and Mr. Burbank sent specimens of it to the Division of Pomology, 

 United States Department of Agriculture in 1887, where it was named in 

 honor of the introducer. Wassu, introduced by J. L. Normand, and the 

 Russian plum, 20 M, sent out by Professor J. L. Budd proved to be indis- 

 tinguishable from the Burbank as tested by Bailey, but Kerr ' thinks the 

 Wassu is a distinct variety. The American Pomological Society added 

 Burbank to the fruit list in its catalog in 1897. 



Tree large, vigorous, distinguished by its low, sprawling habit and flat open top, 

 unusually hardy for a Japanese variety, very productive, healthy; branches somewhat 

 roughish, dark ash-gray, thickly covered with fruit-spurs, with few, large, raised 

 lenticels; branchlets medium in thickness and length, with short internodes, greenish-red 

 changing to dark brown, with gray scarf-skin, glossy, glabrous, with raised lenticels of 

 medium size and number; leaf -buds short, obtuse, free. 



Leaves folded upward, broadly oblanceolate, peach-like, one and one-eighth inches 

 wide, three and three-quarters inches long, thin; upper surface light green, smooth, 

 pubescent only on the deeply grooved midrib; lower surface glabrous, pubescent on the 

 midrib; apex taper-pointed, base cuneate, margin finely and doubly serrate, with 

 small amber or reddish glands; petiole nine-sixteenths inch long, sparingly hairy on 

 one side, tinged red, with from one to four small, reniform or globose glands mostly 

 on the stalk. 



that have gone forth from his private place in California ; they must number well into the hundreds; 

 his biographer, in 1905, said that Mr. Burbank has worked with over two thousand five hundred 

 distinct species (Harwood, W. S., New Creations in Plant Life i. 1905). Among these have been 

 practically all of the species of plums now under cultivation, from which have been obtained, 

 according to Mr. Burbank, hundreds of thousands of plum-seedlings of which the breeder has 

 selected a score or more of very distinct sorts, all interesting and a few of them very valuable. 

 The many other fruits, flowers and forage plants which Mr. Burbank has sent out, each involving 

 the handling of countless seedlings, cannot be mentioned here. Nor can his methods and results 

 be discussed, except to say that in them he is a unique figure in plant-breeding and that they have 

 been such that he has exercised a powerful influence toward the improvement of plants. The 

 practical results of Mr. Burbank's work have been as great or greater than those secured by any other 

 person in plant-breeding, yet they have been magnified out of all bounds in the popular press and 

 his work has been caricatured by calling the man a wizard and ascribing to him occult knowledge. 

 Of the plants introduced by Mr. Burbank the proportion of really valuable commercial ones seems 

 now to be small, but what he has done cannot be measured by money values; he has awakened 

 universal interest in plant-breeding; has demonstrated that things unheard of before his time can 

 be done with plants; and, all in all, his contributions in new forms of plants to horticulture and 

 agriculture, in their intrinsic and educational value, make him the master worker of the times in 

 improving plants. 



1 Statement in a letter from Mr. Burbank. 



* Mr. Kerr in a letter written in 1909 says: "Wassu, as I have it, is radically different from 

 descriptions of both Waugh and Bailey. The tree is as slovenly in habit as is that of the Burbank 

 there all resemblance ceases." 



