The San Francisco call., 1910-09-04
BURBANK Creates
TINY new PLUM
Fruit Has the Wild Variety as
a Parent, Says Santa Rosa
HOrtiCulturist

BERKELEY, Sept. 3.-A juicy little
plum hardly the size. of the garden
pea is the latest creation of Luther
Burbank. He calls the new variety
gained by crossing plums with a wild
plum as the parent the Martina
The new fruit is believed by both Bur
bank and Prof E. j. Wickson, head
of the department of agriculture OF
the university, to have a great future
before it,
To show how the wild plum can be
pollenized, Burbank sent no less than
66 varieties of the Martina to Pro
fessor Wickson and these were placed
on exhibition at the college of agri
culture of the university this morning
Accompanying the fruit was a letter
which explains the new plum, from
the pen of Burbank:
Santa Rosa, Sept. 1. 1910.
Professor E. J. Wickson, Uni
yersity of California, Berkeley,
lished book on fruits, and as l
have an opportunity to steal few
moments at this season to send you
some sample plums (Which have
five years while connected with
the Carnegie institution nor this
summer until the present date), 1
send you by express, prepaid, to-
seedlings, of the tough little bush
plum, Martina which is about
the size of large garden pea, as
you know.
l began on the Martina plum 20
or more years ago on account of it's
extreme hardness and its utter
contempt for any ordinary climatic
conditions, and have been joked
NV II11 1erA Traf1 Il il
about my "dinky little plums,' but
by pollenizing the best of the tri-
horas, Americas, domesticas, dam
sons, myrabolans, simonii, nigras.
plums and all their various hy
brids, have produced strain of
plums which will outbear anything
ever seen in the fruit line, ex
opunJias.
While the Martina grows about
three feet high, these new va
rletles will often. grow. Is or 20
haps, as other plums. Compact in
form and as certain to produce
fruit annually as they are leaves
or buds. all without exception have
Martina like foliage, untroubIed
by insects, fungus or anything
else. All, with one exception,
ripen between August Is and No
vember IS, this exception being a
plum weighing about a fourth of
pound each. which ripens from
June Is to September. Ali have
small blossoms like the Martina,
varying in size, however. All, with
out exception, bloom after other
plums are done blooming, thus
escaping all spring frosts and vicis-
STUDIES OF climate. 'Nuff sed."
Taste en-. Am too busy putting
up bulbs to burden you any
more. Faithfully yours,
LUTHER BURBANK.
F. S.-These samples are few
which | happen to have on hand
today. Have 1900 more varieties
of the same.
Professor Wickson said of the new
plum and its many varieties:
This exhibition is chiefly sig
nificant as illustrating the natural
tendency to variation and vari-
by crossing wild species
with the pollen from blossoms
of other wild species and the
Horticultural varieties developed
from them. Burbank's work is
largely based upon these tenden-
cies to variation as promoted by
his notable skill and exceptional
breadth of effort. All the fruits
seed parent, the prunus MARTINA,
by using different pollelizers. The
wonderful variations produced can
be better appreciated when 1t is
iosi eu lildt the SEED parent
of all of them is, as Burbank says
is his letter, wild plum, hardly
larger than a pea, borne upon a
low shrub occupying most inhos-
pitable situations upon the sea-
coast of New England and else
where
OF course, most of the varieties,
striking as some of them are are
not horticulturally valuable, be-
cause other varieties In use are
just as good. Only very
few out of thousands of va
rieties can be counted real
horticultural acquisitions. This ac-
counts for the fact that Burbank
has to destroy perhaps a thousand
crosses to one, which, according
to his high standards of judging,
he considers worthy of further
propa tion.