10 March, 1917.] Apple Culture in Victoria. 



153 



system of fruit spurs along tlie leaders. By the time the trees are 

 ten years old the building up of the spurs will be completed, and on 

 these the fruit will be produced freely during after years. The 

 leaders, if allowed to remain unpruned, also fruit freely on their ter- 

 minal buds. This has a stunting effect on the leaders and prevents 

 their symmetrical extension. 



Plate 73 is a sixteen-year-old fairly vigorous-growing Rymer tree. 

 Its branch system has been thinned out and the leaders have been 

 shortened back on two occasions as the abrupt turns in the wood near 

 their points indicate. These apparently objectionable turns in the 

 leaders are produced through cutting to light laterals on the three or 

 four-year-old wood and causing them to assume the leadership. 

 Laterals so placed, and when utilized for the purpose mentioned, invari- 

 ably describe a more open angle to the line of the leaders than do the 



Plate 74. — Five Crown, seventeen years old, pruned. 



primary growths, on the two-year-old wood, from which the leaders 

 were originally lengthened. 



Pruning the Five Crown. 



The Rom© Beauty, for reasons already explained, figures promi- 

 nentlv amongst the varieties which, from the scientific pruner's point 

 of view, are the more difficult to shape into, and subsequently maintain, 

 as the modern and approved type of apple tree, and consequently it has 

 been made the subject of detailed illustration in this regard. 



On the other hand, the Five Crown, on account of its naturally 

 open habit of growth and free fruiting characteristics which make it tlie 

 most prominent of these of the class more amenable to pruning treat- 

 ment according to the modern design, has been selected and figured here 

 to show the contrast which exists between the two classes. 



