84 transactions of royal scottish arboricultural society. 



The Importance of Pruning. 



While visiting saw-mills in different districts of Scotland for 

 the purpose of collecting specimens of timber for testing purposes. 

 I had a good opportunity of noticing the effects of different soils 

 and situations upon the growth of various species of trees. The 

 result of these observations cannot be fully chronicled until 

 after the tests are made. One point was, however, driven home 

 to me, upon which I should like at once to express an opinion, 

 and that is, the large percentage of timber that was spoilt, or 

 its value greatly reduced, by the presence of big, black, rotten 

 knots. Undoubtedly this has been due, in the first place, to the 

 open nature of the woods. 



There are various reasons for this fault, viz. — (1) The trees 

 may have been planted too far apart. (2) Thinning in the early 

 stages had been too severe, and made either for the purpose of 

 improving the plantations for game or for providing material 

 for estate purposes (when usually the best trees are taken). (3) 

 A bad mixture may have been planted, and one or more species 

 had been suppressed or killed out, leaving the dominant trees 

 too far apart. (4) Damage by ground game, insects, fungi, etc., 

 may have thinned the crop. 



All of these faults would result in branchy trees, and by the 

 time close canopy had been formed, the branches would be too 

 big and strong to rot off quickly and allow proper occlusion to 

 take place. Year by year the trees would increase in girth, 

 growing round the rotting stump, instead of growing over the 

 smaller wound that would have been left had the branch been 

 killed off at an earlier stage. 



It is a big fault to allow trees to grow very branchy, but it is 

 a worse fault to leave those branches on after they are dead, 

 especially when they are very persistent, as in spruce, Douglas 

 fir, or Scots pine. Even in a plantation where the density is 

 good, dead branches will still adhere to the stems for several 

 years after they die, and my point is that these should be pruned 

 off if we are to grow clean timber able to compete with the best 

 from other countries. 



Trees will grow as well in our climate as on the Continent, 

 and I have seen planks sawn from spruce grown in Scotland, 

 which an expert would have difficulty in detecting from the best 

 Norwegian. This, however, is an exception, but there is no 



