THE CHERRY. 



225 



point, if not shortened, one or more shoots, and all the 

 buds remaining are, during the season, transformed into 

 clusters of fruit buds, and produce fruit the year follow- 

 ing. In the centre of these clusters of fruit buds there is 

 always a wood bud, and this grows a little and produces 

 new clusters of fruit buds to replace those that have 

 borne. Some of the morellos produce fruit on two-year- 

 old wood, like the peach, the leaf buds being transformed 

 into fruit buds. During the second growth of the first 

 season of their formation, the fruit bud is very easily 

 distinguished from the leaf bud by its roundness and 

 plumpness. 



Pruning the Cherry as a Standard. In "Western New 

 York the cherry succeeds so well, and is so totally exempt 

 from the bursting of the bark, that trees can be grown 

 safely with trunks five or six feet high ; but in the "West, 

 when this malady prevails, the less there be of a naked 

 trunk the better ; for it is the trunk and large branches 

 that are generally so affected. As a standard, the cherry 

 requires very little pruning. 



To form a round open head. We will take for exam- 

 ple a young tree two years old, having three or four top 

 branches. These at the time of planting should be cut 

 back to within four or five buds of their base, and when 

 growth has commenced, the requisite number of shoots, 

 say four or five, to form the framework of the head are 

 selected, evenly distributed on all sides, and all the others 

 pinched or rubbed off. 



The following season these shoots may again be short- 

 ened to produce secondary branches to fill up spaces, and 

 those arising in the centre should be pinched out, for the 

 head must be kept open and accessible to the sun and 

 light. In about three years of such treatment, the heaJ 

 of the tree assumes a permanent form, and thereafter, may 

 be left to itself, except to remove occasionally branches 

 10* 



