9 
the same results as shown in the published articles on Burbank’s achievements in 
lilies. W. A. Manda is unquestionably a man of some attainments in horticul- 
ture, and he told me that he hybridized lilies extensively and got such results. 
That was confirmed by my own experience of twenty odd years ago. 
The article states : “Lily growers from all over the ‘world have stood 
dazed, intoxicated with the marvels of beauty and the perfumes of this acreage 
of new lilies in full bloom.” Some of the dealers in the East have tried them. 
I asked one man, and he shook his head sadly and said that he would not try 
any more of them. 
It is told in the magazines how one pleasant evening Burbank was walking 
along a field by some verbenas and he detected an odor which he traced back to 
the plant from which it emanated. He saved it and bred scented verbenas. When 
I was down in the seed fields of C. C. Morse & Company at Gilroy, at the end of 
the Santa Clara Valley, California, I said to Mr. Landrum, the principal there, 
as we were driving along: “By the way, have you got any scented verbenas? ’ 
He said, “I don’t know, I never bothered about them.” I said, “In my young 
days the Sylph type was always fragrant in the whites ; that I am certain of.” 
We jumped out of the wagon and we hadn’t gone ten feet before I stooped down 
and picked up a white one. It had fragrance. 
One other matter is about the blue rose. Now, if there is one thing that 
horticulturists have dreamed over for many years it is to obtain a blue rose. There 
is an axiom that there are three colors not found in varieties of one species, name- 
ly, a true blue, a true yellow and a true scarlet. You will get them to a certain extent 
in the asters, and to a certain extent in hyacinths, but nothing like a true scarlet, 
a blue or a yellow in varieties of any one species. We have yellow in the rose 
and a red that is nearly scarlet, so that all we want now to complete 
the trinity of colors is a blue. In one of these talks Harwood asks Burbank : 
“Did you ever consider the producing of a blue rose?” “Oh, yes,” he said. “Do 
you think it is possible?” and he said, “Oh, it is a very simple matter, from what 
I have learned” — or words to that effect. From his investigations he thought it 
was a very simple matter, but, he said : “My time has been taken up with more 
important matters, and I have not paid any attention to it.” Now, judging from 
the output that has come from the garden at Santa Rosa, I am certain that Bur- 
bank was engaged in matters somewhat trivial, as compared with the production 
of a blue rose. If it is possible for him to do it, and if he wants to “square” himself 
with the florists, all he has to do is to produce a good blue rose and they will 
say: “Come back, everything is forgiven.” 
“The lost flower — the tragedy in plant life. A tiny pinkish white blossom 
upon a brilliant green vine. But one morning a workman discovered that in 
the night every plant had died. The flower could never be recovered because 
the conditions under which it had been created would never occur again.” 
There is a prophet; if he had said they never could occur again, it would 
show that he had some well grounded reason for it in his mind, but he said that 
they would never occur again, which is a very different thing as I view it. But 
the description recalls, the Dolichos Lignosus or Australian Pea Vine which is one 
