Close-up of a specimen of Luther Burbank's famous thornless cactus, ca.1920

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Photograph of a close-up of a specimen of Luther Burbank's famous thornless cactus, ca.1920. The plant is shown on dark background.; "Luther Burbank's Methods: How is the human brain going to acquire in a lifetime all knowledge and wisdom? That is my question. When I met Luther Burbank, he showed me a walnut tree, and he said, 'I took off more than one hundred years from its usual period of growth. I grew that in twelve years.' And you could see the tree bearing walnuts! He made almonds have soft shells, made over the tomato, and created the Shasta daisy from bulbs, and the cactus without thorns. In primitive times the different animals used to eat the cactus, so the cactus developed thorns. When one life begins to hurt another life, that life develops weapons of defense. Burbank went into the garden, looked at the cactus, and every day began to talk to the cactus. 'Please, beloved Cactus, I am Luther Burbank, your friend; I don't mean to hurt you. I am not going to hurt you at all, so why develop thorns?' And so the thornless cactus was developed by talking, by attention, by his knowledge of Nature's laws." -- by Swami Yogananda, Inner Culture, October, 1935.; "I have no frozen samples yet, but you can count on me doing this and finding the results. I was taught how to do these years ago with water. Plants were fed this water and grew bigger and healthier than their identical neighboring plants. We were in Santa Rosa, California at the Luther Burbank greenhouse and gardens. We saw not only where he did his work, but stood in front of a thornless cactus, which he had talked to, and nurtured so that the cactus became thornless because of the trust it no longer needed to protect itself. If this worked to such a degree in this instance, then I am sure you will find positive effects in similar food/plant related soothing/positive/prayerful intervention from human to plant species." -- unknown author.

Asset Metadata

Title Close-up of a specimen of Luther Burbank's famous thornless cactus, ca.1920

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Date Created 1920

Subject Botany -- Cacti (file heading), Cactus (lcsh)

Tags OAI-PMH Harvest

Place California (states), USA (countries)

Temporal Subject 1920

Type images

Format 2 photographs : glass photonegative, photoprint, b&w ; 26 x 21 cm. (aacr2), glass plate negatives (format), photographic prints (aat), photographs (aat)

Source California Historical Society (contributing entity), California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960 (collection), Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, 1860-1960 (subcollection)

Repository Email specol@lib.usc.edu

Repository Name USC Libraries Special Collections

Repository Location Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189

Rights Public Domain. Please credit both “University of Southern California. Libraries” and “California Historical Society” as the source. Digitally reproduced by the USC Digital Library.

Copyright Public Domain. Please credit both “University of Southern California. Libraries” and “California Historical Society” as the source. Digitally reproduced by the USC Digital Library.

Access Conditions Send requests to address or e-mail given

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/chs-m1507

Identifier 5534 (accession number), CHS-5534 (call number), CHS-5534 (filename), chs-m265 (legacy collection record id), chs-c65-2370 (legacy record id), chs-m1507 (legacy record id), USC-1-1-1-14203 (legacy record id), 1-77-66 (microfiche number), USC (project)

IIIF ID [Document.IIIFV3ID]

DM Record ID 2370

Unique identifier UC116560

Legacy Identifier CHS-5534.tiff

Type Image

Internet Media Type image/tiff

Resolution 13.5 in × 16.7 in at 300dpi
34.2 cm × 42.5 cm at 300dpi

Inherited Values

Title Title Insurance and Trust and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection 1860-1960

Description The nearly 15,000 unique photographs of this collection contain the work of C.C. Pierce which cover the Los Angeles region city, street and architectural views, California Missions, Southwestern Native Americans, and turn-of-century Nevada, Arizona, and California. Pierce, active from 1886 to 1940, was one of the leading photographers of his day and amassed a collection of 15,000 images, including his own and those bought and copied from his contemporaries, George Wharton James and Charles Puck. The James collection contains over 2,000 images of portraits, customs, ceremonies, arts, and games of various groups of Southwestern Native Americans.

Date Created 1860/1960

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