250 PRUNING. 



six to seven feet high, with a few top shoots. They have 

 also large, drooping leaves, aiid, with few exceptions, stiff, 

 erect, or slightly curved branches. 



The duke class does not grow so rapidly. The branches 

 are stiff and erect, the leaves smaller as a general thing 

 than the preceding classes, more erect, thicker and of a 

 deeper, darker green color. 



The morettos are of a bushy habit, with smaller leaves 

 than any of the preceding classes, and the branches are 

 more slender and closer together. The bark of all is very 

 tough, being composed of several layers of powerful fibres 

 and tissue. The mode of bearing has already been de- 

 scribed under the head of fruit branches, in the beginning 

 of the work. The fruit is produced on wood three years 

 old, thus : The shoot of last year's growth, which is now 

 furnished with leaf buds in all its length, will produce 

 at the point, if not shortened, one or more shoots, and all 

 the buds remaining are, during the season, transformed 

 into clusters of fruit buds, and produce fruit the year fol- 

 lowing. In the center of these clusters of fruit buds 

 there is always a wood bud, and this grows a little and 

 produces new clusters of fruit buds to replace those that 

 have borne. Some of the morellos produce fruit on two- 

 year-old wood, like the peach, the leaf buds being trans- 

 formed into fruit buds during the second growth of the 

 first season of their formation. The fruit bud is very 

 easily distinguished from the leaf bud by its roundness 

 and plumpness. 



Pruning the Cherry as a Standard. In Western New 

 York the cherry succeeds so well, and being in general ex- 

 empt from the bursting of the bark, that trees can be grown 

 safely with trunks five or six feet high ; but in the West, 

 where this malady prevails, the less there be of a naked 

 trunk the better ; for it is the trunk and large branches 

 that are generally so affected. As a standard, the cherry 

 requires very little pruning. 



