Burbank sold the Russet potato to a seed company and used the money to follow his brothers out to California.īurbank loved California from the outset. He had some success with the creation of his first plant, the Russet Burbank potato. He immediately invested his limited resources in seeds and a plot of land. He extrapolated from Darwin’s research that one might speed up and control the process of natural selection. On a visit to the local public library, he discovered Charles Darwin’s newly published works. He worked various jobs as he cast around for a vocation. Burbank did not plan to become a botanist, but he was forced to quit school when his father died, leaving the Burbank family struggling to make ends meet. He once used a teapot to create a steam whistle “lunch bell” for the workers at his family’s brickyard another time, he persuaded his father to dam a stream to improve the family’s cranberry bog and create a skating pond for Luther and his siblings on their farm in Massachusetts. The most pernicious and prevalent blackberry, the Himalayan, was introduced to the Northwest in the 1880s by Luther Burbank, a California botanist and businessman also known as the “plant wizard.” Burbank named them Himalayan blackberries because he got them from a man in India, but they actually originated in Armenia ( Rubus armeniacus).Īs a child, Luther Burbank was shy and spent most of his time inventing things for his family. From personal experience, I can tell you that contending with wild blackberries and their vicious curved thorns will leave you bleeding. Even the experience of eating a blackberry can be like a surprise attack: a fresh-picked berry can be a delight of lush sweetness or it can be a tart assault, followed by the crunch of bitter seeds. Blackberries invade farms, forests, and rangelands they increase the cost of road, park, and trail maintenance and they suffocate native plants and forests. These destructive beasts, known as blackberries, have strongholds on every continent except Antarctica, but they thrive in Oregon’s Mediterranean climate. Sometimes they seed the earth with embryos and, years later, babies erupt, thrumming with life.Įnterprising people brought these monsters to Oregon, planning to breed them and eat their offspring, but they have escaped from captivity and are fighting back, inflicting economic, environmental, and physical damage. They can reproduce sexually or asexually. Poison is pointless-it slows them, but they build up a tolerance to it and come back stronger. When you hack them to pieces, they return bigger than ever. When you drown them, they resurface alive after forty days. Massive and armed with daggers, they strangle their prey. There are monsters in the Pacific Northwest.
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