136 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



is an apple orchard instead of a pear orchard, Hke the other, and 

 this shows an orchard two or three years older than the last picture. 

 This should be thinned just a little, and cut back a little. 



Here is a stage we reach a little older, with the same type of tree. 

 As you see, these trees are about as full of blossoms as they possibly 

 can hold. 



This illustrates practically the same point that I wanted to 

 bring out before. This happens to be a plum tree instead of a 

 pear tree. As you will see, it has a tendency to be an upright 

 growth. Two or three years ago I started out to measure the wood 

 that grew on several plum trees in the orchard at Durham, and this 

 is one of the trees I measured up. It was my intention to prune 

 the trees and measure the wood, but when I came to that tree I 

 liked the looks of it so well that I decided not to prune it. 



And that is what it did in two years; and you see that each 

 one of those branches is just as full of little spurs as it possibly can 

 be. That tree behaved in a most peculiar way. When it was 

 first set out it was pruned to this point, and then to here. Then 

 it grew from there to there, and from there to there, and from there 

 to there, and from there to there the next season. The average 

 growths were about thirty inches, and they were remarkably 

 uniform, as you saw in the last picture. 



The next year they made these growths, and those growths were 

 not much more than half the length of the growth of the previous 

 year. And this last year, mind you, the tree was thoroughly 

 cultivated, and there are the growths it has made, which are less 

 than half they were the previous year. The tree has been splen- 

 didly cared for, it has never had a check of any kind ; it is a vigor- 

 ously growing tree, but it has never been headed back from the 

 time it reached that head which we wanted it to reach, and it is 

 full of fruit buds. 



Pruning is an individual tree problem. Various varieties must 

 be handled in various ways. This particular tree shown here is a 

 Wealthy. All it needs is a httle trimming out of those branches, 

 and a little heading in order to check it. 



Here is a tree of an entirely different form. I was mistaken in 

 saying that the last one was a Wealthy. That last one was a 

 Wagener. This one is a Wealthy. This one needs very little, 



