CHAPTER X. 



Palmetto Verrier. 



jHEREVER large wall trees are grown, the simple, noble, 

 and beautiful form known to the French as the Palmette 

 Verrier is sure to obtain a place among them. It is 

 indeed the finest of all large forms, and is preferred by many of the 

 best French cultivators to any other. They use it for other trees 

 besides the pear; and by far the finest peach tree I have ever 

 seen was trained after this method near Lyons. The English reader 

 may think it impossible to attain such perfect shape as is shown in 

 Fig. 37, and such perfect equalization of sap as it suggests; but I 

 have seen several trees even more beautifully finished than the one 

 here represented. This figure also shows the advantages of the kind 

 of support used in France for espalier trees as compared with our 

 own ugly method of doing it with rough wooden and iron posts 

 and strong bolt-like expensive wire. It will be seen that the tree 

 differs radically from the usual form of pear tree that we are in the 

 habit of placing against walls, and it is easy to point out its advan- 

 tages in securing an equal flow of sap to all the branches. 



In the common horizontal form the strength and fertility are apt 

 to desert the lower branches, in consequence of their not possessing a 

 growing point to draw the sap through, and particularly when con- 

 stant care is not taken to repress, by summer pinching, the tipper 

 portions of the tree. The form here figured, in common with all very 

 large wall and espalier trees, takes a long time to make. Given a 



M 



