158 STATE POMOLOGieAL SOCIETY, 



followed, was too different to permit a doubt as to which resulted in 

 most profit. 



THE '^BLEEDING" OF APPLE TREES. 

 By T. H. HosKiNS, M. D., Newport, Vt. 



[From Report of ihe Minnesota State Horticultural Society, 1886.] 



A recent writer sa3's he has trimmed apple trees every month m 

 the year, and has come to the conclusion that from May 25th to June 

 25th is the best time, because a wound made in the full flow of the 

 sap will begin to heal immediately. He adds that March and April 

 are the two poorest months to prune, because there will be a liquid 

 "forming" (querj^ flowing?) out of the wound, which will kill the 

 bark underneath the limb. Another writer insists that March is the 

 best of all months to prune, because the sap is not then in motion, 

 and the wound will dry before the sap starts, and that then the pro- 

 cess of healing will go on most favorably, while anything but very 

 light pruning in June will greatly weaken and sometimes kill the 

 trees. Still another writer says, shortl}' and emphatically, "Prune 

 when your knife is sharp," without regard to season. All these 

 writers are orchardists of experience. Is there, then, no proper 

 time to prune, or no way of intelligently reconciling the seemingly 

 contradictory views of these practical men? 



WHY APPLE TREES BLEED. 



A widening accumulation of facts does, in all disputed questions,, 

 tend towards the reconciliation of conflicting opinions. In the thir- 

 teen years that I lived in Kentucky 1 never saw an apple tree 

 "bleed," that is to say, I never saw a flow of disorganized and 

 blackening sap from the stump of a severed limb. In the first years 

 of my orcharding in northern Vermont, this so-called bleeding ex- 

 hibited itself in nearly every case where a limb of any size was re- 

 moved, no matter at what season the operation was performed. It 

 was the most discouraging of my experiences at that time, and I 

 could not understand it, or find a remedy for it. 



About fifteen years ago, at a session of our State Board of Agri- 

 culture in the Champlain Valley, where this question of pruning and 

 subsequent bleeding was discussed by many orchardists of that or- 

 chard country, one of the speakers dropped the casual remark that 

 he bad never known an apple tree that wa» not "black-hearted" tO' 



