Santa Rosa Plum Tree

Luther Burbank is undoubtedly the most noted hybridizer of modern times. He started working with plums in 1881, looking for a way to increase their marketability.

He sought out Japanese varieties of plum, Prunus salicina, which were not regularly planted in the United States at that time. In 1885, he received seedling from Japan and soon thereafter begins offering Japanese Plums to the market. The most noted introductions were the Burbank and Satsuma Plums, which are still available today.

Soon the demand for this type of plum increased, and Burbank set out to further improve the quality of the Japanese plum by crossing desirable characteristics from different seedling selections. At his Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, California, he began crossing Japanese plums with other Japanese varieties, with European plums (Prunus domestica) and with wild plum varieties such as Prunus cerasifera and many others. In 1893, he began offering his own creations in his catalog 'New Creations in Fruit and Flowers.'

The most noteworthy plum from this catalog was the Perfection Plum. It was later renamed the Wickson Plum and is still available today.

Burbank would go on to develop and introduce over 100 varieties of assorted Japanese, European and what today are called interspecific hybrids, meaning crossing different species. One of these has become the best-known plum variety today, the Santa Rosa.

Burbank was not the best record keeper and most of the crosses he made were recorded in his head but not on paper. Also, the methods he used were far from today's standards for hybridization. He had made the claim for many years of bridging species but is wasn't until the early 2000's that this claim could be proven with DNA markers.

The Santa Rosa Plum is an interspecific hybrid of P. salicina x P.cerasifera x P simonii introduced by George C Roeding of Fancher Creek Nursery in Fresno, California in 1906. P. simonii was a popular species used in many of Burbank's crosses most noted for its small pit and firm flesh.

Santa Rosa, named after the town of its origin, would go on to become one of the most important plum varieties of the early 20th century. Santa Rosa remains one of the most popular fruit varieties planted in the home garden today.