ON THE THEORY OF PRUNING. 



litants of the wood-producing force, applicable in the hands of the cultivator as remedies, 

 where unproductiveness results from over-luxuriance — or, as preventives in cases where 

 in a state of fruitfulness the habit of a tree or plant indicates a tendency to the produc- 

 tion of too much wood-growth. These processes are: 



1. Sterling supplies of food. 



2. Neglected cultivation. 



3. Retarding the circulation. 



4. Breaking the circuit of circulation. 



The first of these processes comprises the two very common expedients now practiced 

 to superinduce a state of fruitfulness — root-pruning, and dwarf-pruning. Every tree re- 

 ceives at the extreme points of its rootlets, its supplies of food, which there enter into the 

 circulation by reason of the mysterious attraction of the thicker sap within, for the thin- 

 ner fluids without, (by endosrnose ;) and nothing is plainer than the fact that, other things 

 being equal, the size and vigor of trees and plants, are to each other in proportion to their 

 number of spongioles, and the space they pervade. It is impossible, therefore, to dimin- 

 ish the number of these rootlets, or the area over which they range, without lessening 

 also, the amount of food carried into their general circulation, and by consequence, the 

 share of each bud. The effect of this operation is very generally understood and appre- 

 ciated, and also its application as a means of superinducing fruitfulness. Mutilation of 

 the roots, (and root-pruning is only mutilation, nothing more nor less,) lies at the founda- 

 tion of that very salutary rule, heading back the branches when large trees are transplant- 

 ed. In this case the demand for food is reduced until the enfeebled condition of the root- 

 lets can meet the requisition. 



Most fruit trees, and many plants, are liable to a catastrophe which might be termed, 

 not inaptly, accidental root-pruning. I refer to that strangulation or suffocation of the 

 rootlets resulting from seething and baking rains, sometimes experienced in hot seasons. 

 A visitation of this kind often seems to arrest the circulation, and to bring on a premature 

 decline and fell of the leaf. The cherry, apricot, and plum, are most liable to this affec- 

 tion. Sometimes, however, the apple and pear are not exempt. I have, myself, witness- 

 ed instances in which the Rousselette de Rheims, after making shoots four to six feet in 

 length, in the early part of the season, and losing its leaves in July or August, has form- 

 ed sessile fruit buds throughout the whole extent of such branches, producing thereon a 

 wreath of fruits in the following season. I do not mean to say the fruitlets would be with- 

 out peduncles, but the clusters without spurs — which is their usual appendage. 



Dwarfing fruit trees, by propagating them upon small growing stocks, is only another 

 method of stinting supplies of food. In this case we avoid the necessity of resorting to 

 artificial means to diminish the system of roots, by making choice of stocks whose roots 

 are naturally small — and it appears to me that the whole claim of this practice to favora- 

 ble regard, rests upon the following considerations only, and not upon any mysterious 

 agency exerted by the stock upon the habits of the graft. 1st. It enables the amateur to 

 cultivate a large number of varieties within a small compass. 2d. Fruits upon dwarf 

 trees, like clusters of the grape upon branches from which the wood-producing force has 

 been removed by amputation, have control of the circulation, and for this reason, larger 

 and finer than upon trees where the wood growth is more active. 3d. Dwarfing simpli- 

 fies fruit culture — the whole business of cultivation is to stimulate — the balance of power 

 is at all times against wood-growth. One must cultivate and manure; must thin and 

 shorten in. An ordinary fruit tree, when inserted upon a dwarf stock, is not unlike the 

 fox in the fable, at the feast of the storks — its food has to be reached through such dimin- 



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