TREE PRUNING 5 



thick, and instances could be pointed out where the 

 removal of one-fourth of the existing trees would be 

 of infinite benefit to the remaining specimens, for it 

 will be generally admitted that tall, lanky, branchless 

 poles with a tuft of foliage on top are quite at variance 

 with the idealistic requirements of town trees. 



Pruning or lopping, too, is in many cases carried 

 out in a barbarous and unscientific way, as the hundreds 

 of mop-headed Planes and Limes all over London but 

 too plainly point out ; indeed, the management of such 

 trees is a disgrace to our city, and in the eyes of 

 visitors tends to lower the art of forestry as practised 

 in this country. 



The Plane and Lime trees are the most cruelly 

 treated of London trees, for the annual lopping to 

 which many of these are subjected, especially in narrow 

 streets, and which they bravely try to rectify, strikes 

 every lover of the natural with regret and shame that 

 such beautiful and noble forest trees should be so 

 tortured and disfigured. The usual explanation is 

 that they are the only trees that will succeed in a 

 satisfactory way in the London area, and in order to 

 keep them in bounds an annual lopping is imperative. 

 But this is hardly correct, for by planting at the first 

 such moderate-sized trees as the beautiful flowering 

 Thorns, Catalpa, the dwarf Acacias, the Almond, 

 Cherries, Mulberry or Mountain Ash in fact, any 

 of the Pyrus family all this lopping and restrain- 

 ing of noble growth would be avoided. There are, 

 however, cases in which pruning is justifiable and 

 where the abuse of the system should furnish no 

 argument against its legitimate use, such as in the case 

 of diseased trees and in the removal of weighty branches 

 from Elms and Poplars, which frequently snap across 



