THE FLOEAL WOELD AXD GAEDEN GUIDE. 333 



ROOT-PRUNING. 



I T is one of the most common of all things, to find trees of 

 every kind unproductive of flowers, although in a state 

 of robust health ; this excites surprise. But a rank 

 foliage and coarse shoots are not better evidence that a 

 tree is in health, than a red face and corpulence in a 

 man ; in both cases it shows that the individual eats and drinks too 

 much, and should commence an all-excellent remedy in both cases. In 

 plants there is no mode of obstructing the tendency in luxuriance 

 but by crippling the roots ; for with the atmosphere and its action 

 on the vegetable system we cannot deal in the open air. 



It does not much matter at what period of the winter this opera- 

 tion is performed, so that it takes place before the fall of the leaf, 

 and the swelling of the buds in spring ; but it is better to perform 

 it before the end of November. 



The roots should be cut through all round, and undermined in 

 proportion to the size of the head. A tree between eight and ten 

 feet high, may be cut to within three and a half or four feet of the 

 trunk ; but care should be taken not to approach much nearer ; 

 because, although the tree is not likely to be killed by the operation, 

 yet it may be so much stunted as to bear a too scanty foliage in the 

 succeeding season. But even if this is done, the tree will recover 

 by the following year. 



No one who has neglected to observe the effect of this practice 

 can form an adequate idea of its importance if steadily persevered in 

 by removing it whenever the trees are becoming coarse wooded. 

 Dr. Lindley accounts for the effects by the following theorum : — 

 " If the roots of a plant are large and numerous, the head must be 

 so too, for this plain reason, that the amount of fluid food received 

 by a plant is in proportion to the size and extent of its roots, and 

 that food must be expended in the formation of branches. There 

 can be no interference with such a law as this. Suppose one tree 

 absorbs 201bs. of fluid food, or sap, and the other 401bs. by the 

 roots, all other circumstances being equal, it is evident that the one 

 will have twice as much organizable matter as the other ; and as 

 such matter cannot be returned back into the soil, but is irresistibly 

 driven upwards by the force of vegetation, it can only be expended 

 in the organization of leaves and branches ; consequently the leaves 

 and branches will be twice as large, or twice as numerous, in the 

 one case as in the other. Of course, the reverse of this is equally 

 true." 



By this reasoning, the correctness of which cannot be doubted, 

 it appears that we have at all times the option of limiting the 

 growth of a tree to any size desired; and it is by carrying root- 

 pruning to a great extent, that the Chinese produce the dwarf trees 

 which excite so much astonishment in Europe. But the process 

 may be adopted with advantage in many other cases besides fruit 

 trees, in creepers, for instance, which it is desired to confine within 

 a certain compass. 



November. 



