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Luther Burbank (1849-1926) with Wilbur Hall http://tinyurl.com/LBurbank

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Satsuma Plum

From The Harvest of the Years, 1931.

Reader: Daniel Maloney

Many emigrants have arrived in California with almost nothing, including one young man from the east whose fortune was a pocketful of potatos.

In 1875, horticultural entrepreneur Luther Burbank settled in Santa Rosa, where he found perfect conditions for creating new plant hybrids and improving exotic ones, including a luscious import from Japan.

. . . I was browsing in the Mechanics Library in San Francisco when I came across a book written by an American sailor about his wanderings in Japan, and in it there was a description of a "blood-red" plum found in the province of Satsuma. That sailorman was not a skilled writer, but he certainly must have been a good trenchman, because he described that plum so that it made your mouth water to read about it! As far as I was concerned the red-fleshed plum of Satsuma was sold and the first payment made down! I was going to have it for California.

Luther Burbank recounted this story in his 1926 autobiography, The Harvest of the Years, written with Wilbur Hall.