Luther Burbank

Life & Legacy

Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849 – April 11, 1926) was an American botanist, horticulturist, and pioneer in agricultural science who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank primarily worked with fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed (but did not create) a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.
Burbank's most successful strains and varieties included the Shasta daisy, the fire poppy (note possible confusion with the California wildflower, Papaver californicum, which is also called a "fire poppy"), the "July Elberta" peach, the "Santa Rosa" plum, the "Flaming Gold" nectarine, the "Wickson" plum (named after the agronomist Edward J. Wickson), the freestone peach, and the white blackberry.
A natural genetic variant of the Burbank potato with russet-colored skin later became known as the russet Burbank potato. This large, brown-skinned, white-fleshed potato has become the world's predominant potato in food processing. The Russet Burbank potato originated to help with the devastating situation in Ireland following the Great Famine of 1845-1852. This particular potato variety was developed by Burbank and exported to Ireland to "revive that country's leading crop" as it is slightly late-blight-resistant. (Late blight is a disease that spread and destroyed potatoes all across Europe, but caused extreme chaos in Ireland due to the Irish population's high dependency on potatoes as a crop.)