Summer Pimning of Fry it Trees, <^c. 217 



to the same length as the others, and as there will be no 

 danger after this period of the remaining buds being stim- 

 ulated into growth, and likewise no injury in removing the 

 leaves, which have by this time nearly completed their 

 functions, it will be as essential to remove them now, as it 

 was essential before to let them remain. By this method 

 of pruning, no three or four crops of young wood will ap- 

 pear, by which the tree exhausts itself to no purpose, and 

 loses its energy in the production of useless wood. I hope 

 from what has been stated, that the importance of summer 

 pruning has been clearly sliown. 



I shall now endeavor to show the advantage of cutting 

 out all superfluous wood in the autumn, instead of the win- 

 ter and spring, as usually practised. 



If what is called winter pruning be performed in the au- 

 tumn, all the sap which is accumulated by the tree during 

 the winter Avill be retained to supply the succeeding year's 

 wood, which would not be the case if winter or spring pru- 

 ning were adopted ; the sap accumulated from the autumn 

 till winter or spring, in the wood, to be cut away as use- 

 less, is considerable, and would all be saved by autumnal 

 pruning. Vegetation is more or less active in winter, as well 

 as in summer, and absorbs from the earth a certain quantity 

 of matter at this seemingly dead season. "The fact, (says 

 Dr. Lindley,) of many plants retaining their leaves, of others 

 swelling their buds, and of all forming an addition, more 

 or less considerable, to the points of their roots, sufficiently 

 attest the movement of the fluids. Whatever power of 

 attracting sap by its roots a plant may possess, dur- 

 ing the winter, it is obvious that it has little means of 

 parting with any of it again, by evaporation, at that pe- 

 riod of the year; so that, during the winter, the whole 

 of the tissue must gradually acquire a state of turgidity, 

 which will go on increasing till the leaves and new branches 

 of another year are developed and carry off" the sap, or 

 decompose and assimilate it. This turgid state is emi- 

 nently favorable to rapid growth when vegetation once re- 

 sumes its activity. It is well known that after very long 

 winters, or when a plant has been prevented, by artificial 

 means, from shooting at its usual season, its branches and 

 leaves are developed with extraordinary vigor, a circum- 

 stance which is owing to the turgid state of the tissue, for 



VOL. X. NO. VI. 28 



