Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/55

 PKUNING 47 future uses for timber, and while some are made to grow with a clear straight trunk, in other cases their branches are encouraged and so directed as to form knees required in ship building. In this country pruning is most fre- FIG. 1. A Young Tree Pruned and Unpruned. quently done upon old orchards, in which the trees have been left to themselves since they were first planted, and are unfruitful except on the extreme outer twigs on account of the crowded condition of their heads, in which branches cross one another in a confused mass, impenetrable to light and air. In such cases all that need be done is to remove the super- fluous wood in such a manner as to leave an evenly balanced and open head. The intelli- gent fruit grower will prefer to set trees only one year old from the bud or graft, and they will be either simple wands or stems, furnished with buds along their length, or a few of the upper buds may have pushed and formed branches ; with a tree like this to start with, he can form the head at such height as best suits him, and de- termine its branch- ing. The upper- most buds of a young tree or branch are the most vigorous, and start the soonest in spring ; if left to itself, such a branch or young tree will produce a few strong shoots at the top, those below will be grad- ually weaker, un- til those at its lower part, being robbed of all nourishment by the rapidly growing shoots above, will not start at all. Such a branch or tree as this may be cut back so that the lower buds only will start and produce shoots, which 688 VOL. xiv. 4 Fio. 2. Kisrht and Wrong In Pruning. will ripen into three or four branches, and these will be strong, from having all the nutri- ment that would have been divided among nu- merous shoots were it left unpruned. Simi- larly the ramification, and consequently the whole head of the tree, may be directed and controlled at will. The effects of judicious pru- ning upon young trees are strikingly shown in apple and pear trees, which at the end of four or five years of systematic pruning are com- plete pyramids, with the base near the ground, and the branches equally distributed and grad- ually diminishing in size to the top. Pruning is frequently resorted to when trees have be- come stunted and almost ceased to grow ; if the top of such a tree has its branches judiciously cut back, the remaining buds, having to them- selves the sap which was formerly divided among the whole, will produce vigorous new shoots, and this will be responded to by a new growth of roots, and the whole tree will be invigorated. These in- stances have reference to the wood growth of the tree ; whatever fa- vors that diminishes the production of fruit, and vice versa ; hence the pruning to induce fruit-bearing is quite different from that to promote vigor of growth. If a tree is severely pruned soon after its leaves are de- veloped, it receives a sudden check, and it is the tendency of all such shocks to induce the tree to propagate itself by seed ; instead of preparing for an extended growth of branches the next year, many of the buds, which would other- wise have produced leafy shoots, become fruit buds. In practice, pruning to produce fruit is not done in this severe manner, but by stop- ping the extension of a portion of the shoots after they have made a certain growth ; as this is done when the shoots are so tender as not to require a knife, it is termed pinching. By careful management the form and fruit- fulness of trees may be controlled with but little use of the knife; buds which would produce branches where they are not wanted are broken off soon after they start to grow, and by checking the prolongation of other branches at the proper point an equal dis- tribution of sap, and consequently of growth, is maintained over the whole tree. Eoot pruning, or removing a portion of the roots, is resorted to for the purpose of control- ling the size of the tree, to produce fruit- Fio. 8. A Pyramidal Tree, produced by proper Pru- ning.