2 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



forded by his practice. We are accustomed to class such training as 

 experience, but I fail to see why such an important part of one 's educa- 

 tion should receive this common place classification. 



What I have to say to you, you may call nature study if you like ; I 

 shall not feel insulted. But how many are able to answer such ques- 

 tions as these : How many flowers will a single fruit-bud of the peach, 

 plum or cherry develop ? Does the fruit-bud of the peach, cherry or 

 plum produce leaves as well as flowers? Where do these fruits really 

 l)ear their fruit-buds? Yet, the information is important if we are to 

 be good pruners. The moral is, we should all be better observers. 



Any one who has had any great amount of experience in priming our 

 common fruit trees, realizes that these trees bear their fruit in certain 

 positions, each kind of fruit tree having a fruit-bearing habit more or 

 less of its own. Possibh^ we have not stopped to think that many other 

 plants, grown for flowers for instance, have their flower-bearing habit 

 wliieh must be considered in pruning. The rose bears its flowers from 

 certain types of wood and the gardener has learned to regulate flower- 

 bearing by thinning to a certain amount of this wood. However, a 

 system of pruning, such as is commonly practiced in pruning the rose, 

 would leave a lilac bush without a flower. Even the cucumber and the 

 cantaloupe liave a regular habit of bearing fruit. The pistillate flowers 

 which develop into fruits appear in certain places, while the staminate 

 flowers occupy all other positions where flowers are normally borne. 

 On the first main vine the first pistillate flower is generally well out in 

 the axil of say the sixth, seventh or eighth leaf. On the branch vines 

 a pistillate flower appears in the axil of the first leaf. This branch then 

 commonly grows for some distance before it bears another pistillate 

 flower. If, however, another branch vine arises from this, the first 

 flower is a pistillate flower and it appears in the axil of the first leaf. 

 In these cucurbits, early setting of fruit may be induced by such 

 pruning as encourages early branching. The gain is not so much in 

 production as in securing an early set of fruit, and consequently the 

 ripening of the crop over a shorter season. 



TYPES OF FRUIT BEARING. 



Among our common deciduous fruit trees, we have two types of fruit- 

 bearing — from axillary buds and from true terminal buds. The axil- 

 larv buds are borne in the axils of leaves along the side of the branch, 

 and the terminal buds at the tip of the shoot or branch. When applied 

 to Imds the last term is confusing, for we must remember that not every 

 bud terminating the growth of the season, is a true terminal bud. In 

 the case of many of the plums and the apricot, the last bud, in fact all 

 buds, are axillary. Each is developed in the axil of a single leaf, Avhile 

 the true terminal bud is usually subtended by two leaves, one on either 

 side of the stem. The plant which bears its fruit from the axillary 

 l)uds is naturally more productive than the one that bears only from 

 terminal buds. One can see at a glance that a tree bears many more 

 axillary than terminal buds. The stone fruits as a class bear from 

 axillary fruit-buds, and we recognize them as more fruitful than apples 

 and pears, which bear mostly from terminal buds. For this reason, the 

 stone-fruits require more vigorous pruning. But a fruit-bearing habit 

 may mean more than bearing from axillary or terminal fruit-buds. 



