86 Fruit-growing in Arid Regions 



branches, as shown in Figure 19. There is not the slight- 

 est difficulty in working around the trees in this orchard, 

 whereas the branches on high-headed trees commonly 

 droop after they have borne a full crop of fruit, and so 

 interfere with all orchard management. 



The following extract is taken from Bailey's "Prun- 

 ing-Book": "The relative merits of high or low heads 

 for fruit trees are always in dispute. This controversy 

 is partly the result of confusion of ideas and partly of 

 differing mental ideals and of varying climates. Two 

 factors are chiefly concerned in these disputes the 

 question of ease of cultivation, and the question of injury 

 to the trunk by sun-scald. It is the commonest notion 

 that short trunks necessarily make low heads, and yet any 

 one who can see a tree should know better. The number 

 of the trunks which a tree has does not determine the 

 direction of the leaf-bearing limbs. This tree [referring 

 to illustration] can be worked around as easily as it could 

 be if it only had one long trunk. In fact, branches which 

 start high from a trunk are very apt to become horizontal 

 and droop. There must be a certain number of scaffold 

 limbs to form the head. If these limbs are taken out 

 comparatively low, they may be trained in an upright 

 direction and hold their weight and position. If they 

 are started out very high, they will not take such an up- 

 right direction, because the tree will not grow beyond its 

 normal stature. High-trained trees are often practically 

 lowest-headed." 



Form of Tree 



The business of Western orcharding is not old enough 

 to have developed systems of pruning that may be said 



