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, Solanum 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-pdllenizing. 



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, 



[122] 



