Identifier: lutherburbankhis03burb Title: Luther Burbank, his methods and discoveries and their practical application; prepared from his original field notes covering more than 100,000 experiments made during forty years devoted to plant improvement Year: 1914 (1910s) Authors: Burbank, Luther, 1849-1926 Whitson, John John, Robert Williams, Henry Smith, 1863-1943 Luther Burbank Society Subjects: Plant breeding Publisher: New York, Luther Burbank Press

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Text Appearing Before Image: Two Gourd Blossoms to be Pollenated The Gourd belongs to the same jamily as the pump-kin, and, like that plant, bears the staminate and pistillateflowers separately. This arrangement makes it very easy to effecthybridization. Gourds and other squashes are cross-Jertilizedso readily that different species must be grown Jarapart ij the strains are to he kept pure.

Text Appearing After Image: Pollenating the Gourd Blossoms To effect fertilization, nothing more is necessary than to pluck a staminate flower, pulling away its corolla, to expose the pollen-bearing surface, and to insert this in the pistillate flower, gently dusting the stigma ivith pollen. The facility ivith which this may be effected makes the members oj this family very attractive to the amateur experimenter. LUTHER BURBANK produce nectar to feed the insect allies, sincethese have been renounced. And it may very wellchance that the saving of energy thus effectedmore than counterbalances the waste throughexcessive pollen production. At all events the plants that have adopted thissystem of pollenizing give evidence that their planis not a bad one in the very fact of their extremeabundance. Moreover the wind-loving or anemophilousplants, as the botanist terms them, have not onlyproduced a great variety of species and vastnumbers of individuals, making up the bulk ofour forests, but the individuals themselves ar

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