Luther Burbank

Luther Burbank , born the March 7th 1849 with Lancaster, Massachusetts and dead the April 11th 1926 with Santa Rosa in California, is a American horticulturist which developed more than 800 new varieties of Plante S of which the Potato Russet Burbank , also known under the name of potato of Idaho .

It settles in Santa Rosa in 1875. It acquires 69.000 m of ground where, inspired by the work of Charles Darwin, “The Variation off Animals and Plants under Domestication”, it leads experiments of crossing between varieties of plants. Among many the Hybride S which it obtains one can quote plum S, Framboise S, Abricot S, fishings… In its gardens, it permanently tried out 3.000 crossings by the setting in culture of million feet. It tests on the whole, during its life, more than 30.000 new varieties.

It develops the potato Russet Burbank in 1871 which is exported in Ireland to fight against the Grande Famine. He was freemason.

Its work is also at the origin of the American law of 1930 on the possibility of patenting new hybrids of plants (the Obvious Plant Act).

Burbank was also interested in the spiritual questions and, during the last years of its life, was a friend of Paramahansa Yogananda which defines it as the ideal of the American saint.

The American city of Burbank, celebrates to be the seat many companies of media whose Walt Disney Company, was named, not in its honor as it commonly is believed, but in the honor of the dentist David Burbank.

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