CHAP. XLU. ROSA CEX. ROSA. 807 
Pruning. The rose requires to be pruned every year; the strong-growing 
hardy kinds in the autumn, or the beginning of winter, and the more tender 
kinds early in spring. Dumont recommends pruning the early-flowering sorts 
in autumn, and the’late sorts during spring; but neither during winter. 
Rivers observes that pruning should always be performed in October or 
March; but October pruning, he says, will be found decidedly the most ad- 
vantageous, as, the plant having less wood and fewer buds to nourish during 
the winter, the buds left will have acquired extra vigour for pushing in the 
spring. This is a valuable remark, and will apply to all ligneous plants 
whatever. In the operation of pruning three objects ought to be kept in 
view: the removal of the old wood, because, in most varieties, it is only the 
young wood that produces large and finely formed flowers ; the thinning out and 
shortening of the young wood, that the flowers produced may be fewer, and 
consequently have more nourishment, and more light and air, and thus become 
stronger ; and the forming of the head, or bush, into some symmetrical shape. 
Some varieties require much less pruning than others; and climbers, and 
most of the varieties of the Scotch rose, should, in general, only have their 
shoots thinned out, and should be but seldom, if ever, shortened. In 
shortening young shoots, not more than from two to three, or, at most, four 
buds, should be left on each. The cuts should be made close above the bud, 
about the thickness of a sixpence from it, and sloping away from it at an 
angle of about 45°. A standard rose, properly pruned, will, in general, pre- 
sent a head, in the winter season, not more than | ft. in diameter; nevertheless, 
some of the vigorous-growing kinds will, ,, 
flower very well with heads of twice or 83 
thrice that size. (See figs. 543, 544, and 
545.) The peculiarities in treatment 
which different varieties require, whether * 
as regards pruning, or other points of 
culture, will be found noticed under their 
respective names in preceding pages ; 
and in Mr. Rivers’s observations on the 
different sorts grown in his nursery: see 
p. 780. to p. 783. ; 
Summer Pruning. By cutting out wood at different times during summer, a 
succession of roses may be produced, more especially in the Noisettes, and 
other China varieties, and in the rose des quatre saisons: but this practice 
should never be adopted as a general one; because, by occasioning extraordi- 
nary exertion in one season, it weakens the plants for the year following. 
The only kinds ef summer pruning that we think generally applicable and 
unobjectionable are, thinning out with the finger and thumb the flower buds * 
as soon as they are discernible, so as to leave no more than what the plant 
can bring to perfection; and, after these buds have expanded and begun to 
decay, cutting them off close to the floral leaf. In performing this last operation, 
none of the leaves ought to be cut off; because the effect of that would, with 
many varieties, be to occasion the production of a second shoot, and thus 
to weaken the plant, as well as to render it unsightly. There are some roses 
which have handsome calyxes, and others which produce large and showy. 
coloured hips, such as the apple-bearing rose: in both these cases, instead of 
cutting off the decayed flower, the decayed petals only should be picked out ; 
and this, also, should be done in the case of those roses which, when the 
stalks of the decayed flowers are cut off, are apt to produce summer shoots. 
In the case of single roses, the cutting off of the decayed flowers is not 
so necessary as in the double sorts; as it is the multiplicity of petals in a 
state of incipient decay which gives that slovenly appearance, so contrary 
to the spirit of what we call the gardenesque, and what our enlightened and 
elegant contemporary and friend, M. Soulange-Bodin, calls /a belle culture, as 
being in gardening what the del/es lettres are in literature, or the beauc arts 
in the arts. 

