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- Luther Burbank
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- (JANUARY 18, 1926)
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- Out in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, Calif., where Pacific
- breezes make days pleasant and nights chill, for 50 years
- Naturalist Luther Burbank has been making a bit of desert bloom
- weirdly yet profitably. Since 1875 he has been on his
- experiment farm mating pistils to stamens in strange
- concubinage, getting sometimes a beautiful scion, sometimes a
- grotesque mongrel, sometimes finding a futile barrenness. Last
- week Naturalist Burbank was elated, greeted pressmen with news
- of seven miracles of hybridization in plants. He reported a new
- camassia, blue tinted, excelling all others in beauty and
- ability to multiply; a rainbowteosinte, a giant corn that grows
- eight feet tall and produces 8 to 14 ears a stalk; a giant
- cactus-flowering zinnia, developed from the familiar plant; a
- hybrid of the torch lily, the tritoma, which will bloom
- profusely in cold climates; and even more magnificent Shasta
- daisy than blooms at present; a new strain of giant asters of
- breath-taking fluffiness; and eight new gladioli.
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