HORTICULTURAL RESEARCH 407 



buds. In cases in which a difference has been made it was 

 found, also, that the trees pruned to the inside buds made the 

 greatest growth, due, no doubt, to the branches being closer 

 together and, therefore, getting more drawn up. Other details 

 which are insisted on — that the cut should be a slanting one and 

 as near a bud as possible— seem to be quite unimportant and to 

 make no difference to the well-being of the tree : when a branch 

 is cut a callus always forms at a bud and in a plane at right 

 angles to the branch ; any wood above it dies and is cut off 

 from communication with the living wood below by the callus. 

 These dead snags may be unsightly but they are not detri- 

 mental to the tree ; in our experiments on the subject, trees 

 pruned even two inches above a bud have always done better 

 than those pruned in the orthodox way, because, no doubt, the 

 bud is weakened by having the wood cut away close to it. 



Root-Pruning 



Wood-formation and fruiting are to a certain extent antago- 

 nistic to each other : a tree which is growing vigorously will 

 be too much exhausted in the process to bear heavily; by 

 putting a check on the growth, the cropping may be increased. 

 One method of doing this is by root-pruning. The tree, if 

 young, may be lifted bodily and the roots shortened ; or if 

 older, a trench may be dug down around it and all or some 

 of the roots pruned. The check thus given to a tree is a 

 serious one. In some plots of dwarf apple trees on paradise 

 stock root-pruning has been practised regularly since the trees 

 were planted. In one case this was done every fourth year, 

 with the result that, after fifteen years, the size of these trees 

 was only 75 per cent, of that of similar trees which had not 

 been root-pruned ; in a second case the trees were root-pruned 

 every other year and their size was reduced to 35 per cent, 

 of the unpruned trees ; whilst in a third case they were root- 

 pruned every year : these trees did not grow at all and after 

 about fifteen years were all dead. In the case of the least 

 severe treatment (pruned every fourth year), the trees bore 

 heavily, principally in the second year after the pruning ; but 

 owing to the reduction in size of the trees, the actual amount 

 of fruit borne was, on the average, only 44 per cent, of that 

 from similar trees which had not been root-pruned. Where the 



