PRUNING. 



attempt this at the moment of transplanting, or w:iit until the tree lias taken root, 

 and is capable of making a vigorous growth, is a question. This is a point of some 

 importance. We know that newly planted trees push but feebly at best, in compari- 

 son with those well rooted, and that the shoots produced the first season make a very 

 indifferent frame work for the tree. We have considerable experience on this very 

 point, and we have come to the conclusion that it is much better to defer the pruning 

 which is to produce the final and permanent form of the tree, until the second year, 

 or until the tree shows unmistakable signs of being well rooted, and in a condition to 

 make vigorous growth. But care must be taken to preserve and encourage, as far as 

 possible, young shoots with active buds on the parts where we intend to produce the 

 new head ; because old wood, in which the buds have become in a measure dormant, 

 does not throw out branches with desirable rapidity and vigor. 



If, on the other hand, the head be too low, the first impulse would naturally be to 

 prune it up. But this demands some caution. Where branches of considerable size 

 are pruned off, when the tree is transplanted, and consequently unfit to make much 

 growth, the fresh surface of the wounds dry up, and do not heal over quickly, as when 

 the tree is in an active and vigorous condition. Beside, buds are essential to growth ; 

 and if too great a proportion of them be removed at once, the power of the cells or 

 sap-vessels is impaired, and they cannot transmit the nutritive fluids from the roots 

 upward. The roots, too, lose their activity, and general stagnation and debility 

 follow. The better way is to reduce the head by thinning out some branches and 

 shortening others, especially the lower ones ; and in the season following, or when 

 the tree has fairly recovered from removal, the large branches may be removed 

 and the stem formed higher up ; the upper shoots allowed to remain having suffi- 

 cient power to maintain the functions of the different parts of the tree in full force 

 and vigor. 



The third object in pruning at the time of transplanting, is, io restore the balance 

 or proportion between the roots and branches, which has been disturbed in the procens 

 of removal. A transplanted tree, no matter how carefully or skillfully it may have 

 been operated upon, has its system materially deranged. The roots may neither be 

 bruised or broken, nor the fibres dried or injured by exposure ; and yet the ordinary 

 functions of the various parts, and their reciprocal action and influence upon each 

 other, can not but be in a measure arrested for a time. The roots can not abstract 

 nutriment from the soil, and convey it through the trunk and branches, to supply the 

 demand of the leaves, until they have taken to their new position and emitted new 

 rootlets or feeders. Until this takes place, the demand of the leaves must be sup- 

 plied from the stock of nutriment previously laid up in the cells, just as we see young 

 shoots subsisting for a time on trees that have been cut down or torn up by the roots. 

 As long as any sap remains in the cells, and can find a passage to the leaves, the 

 latter continue green and healthy ; but as soon as the sap is expended, and the cells 

 dried up, the leaves wither, and vitality terminates. Transplanted trees are, until re- 

 rooted, in the same situation, nearly, as trees cut down or rooted up and left on 

 surface of the ground — that is, they must rely mainly on the sap existing in the 



