September ig, i88S.] 



Garden and Forest. 



349 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



rllULISHED WEEKLY HY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, i£ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorim- Articles : — The Rejuvenescence of Old Trees (with itliislralions). . 



Flowers in T.ipan. — II Tlit'odorc IVorcs. 



A Woodland Tragedy Mrs. Scliuyler I 'an Renssclac?-. 



Foreign Correspondence; — London Letter IV. Goldring, 



New or Little Known Plants ; — Pseudophcenix Sart^enti (with illustrations), 



C. S. S. 



Cultural Department; — The Cultivation of Nati\'e Ferns. — IV., 



Rob':rt T. yackson. 



Dutch Bulbs ..C.L. Allen. 



The Vegetable Garden U'jn. Falconer. 



Fay's Prolific Currant — China .Asters — .\sclepias atrosanguinea aurea... 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum J. 



The Forest; — A New Forest Law in Russia — Planting the Dunes 



Correspondence ; — Suggestions for Making a Tennis Lawn — Shrub Notes. 



Recent Publications 



Notes 



Illustrations : — Methods of Pruning 



Pseudophcenix Sargenti, Fig. 55 



Fruit of Pseudophcenix Sargenti, Fig. 56 ,, 



349 



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351 



352 

 354 

 355 

 356 

 35S 



357 

 357 

 359 

 360 



The Rejuvenescence of Old Trees. 



THE fact that old and apparently decrepit deciduous 

 trees can be rejuvenated by judicious pruninsr, is 

 not well understood in this country, where old trees, 

 which might perhaps be made to live a century or two, 

 are often allowed to perish unnecessarily. The death of a 

 tree can generally be traced to a gradual failing of vigor 

 due to insufficient nourishment, or to internal decay, the 

 result generally of neglect. The first indication of danger 

 usually appears at the top, and when the upper branches 

 of a tree begin to die, it is a sure indication that, unless 

 radical measures are taken to check the trouble, it can 

 only live a comparatively short time. Vigor can be re- 

 stored to a tree in this condition by shortening all its 

 branches by one-third or one-half of their entire length. 

 The only care needed in this operation is to cut back each 

 main branch to a healthy lateral branch, which will serve 

 to attract and elaborate, by 

 means of its leaves, a sufficient 

 ilow of sap to insure the 

 growth of the branch. This is 

 essential in good pruning, and, 

 if neglected, the end of the 

 branch will die back to the 

 first lateral branch or bud be- 

 low the cut, leaving a point of 

 danger to the tree. Care, 

 too, must be taken to shorten 

 the branches in such a way 

 that the lowest will be the 

 longest, that the greatest pos- 

 sible leaf surface may be ex- 

 posed to the light. Figure i 

 will serve to show how an 

 ancient Oak should be pruned 

 for the purpose of increasing 

 its vigor.* The vigor of a 



*We are indebted to the Trustees of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting 

 Agriculture for permission to reproduce these figures, which are extracted from 

 Monsieur A. des Car's work upon Tree Pruning, of which an English edition was 

 published in 1881, bv the Massachusetts Society, under the title of "A Treatise on 

 Pruning Forest and Ornamental Trees," a work in which the whele theory of 

 pruning is clearly e,\plained and illustrated. 



Fig. I. 



tree depends upon the jiower of its leaves to elaborate 

 plant food. The larger the leaf surface exposed to the 

 light, the greater will be the vigor of the tree. The object 

 of pruning, therefore, is to increase leaf surface. If half of a 

 branch of a decrepit tree, bearing small and scattered leaves, 

 is cut away, the leaves which will grow upon the half 

 which is left will be so large that their total area will often 

 be more than double the total area of the leaves upon the 

 whole branch before it was cut. The truth of this state- 

 ment can be easily verified by cutting down to the ground 

 in the spring a feeble seedling Oak, or, indeed, any young 

 seedling tree, when a tall, vigorous shoot, twice the 

 height and diameter, perhaps, of the slender stem it re- 

 places, will appear at the end of a few months, and, 



although this shoot will only 

 produce a few leaves, its 

 greater vigor is due to the fact 

 that a larger leaf surface is pre- 

 sented to the light by these few 

 large leaves than by the more 

 numerous smaller leaves of the 

 original plant. The vigor, too, 

 of a tree, can be increased after 

 it has been pruned by a good 

 top dressing of well rotted 

 manure, or of fresh soil applied 

 over its roots ; and trees grow- 

 ing on banks can often be bene- 

 fited by deepening the soil on the lower side. A large body 

 of plant food can thus be supplied without burying any 

 part of the trunk and without injury to the tree. 



The internal decay by which so many old trees perish, 

 through inability to resist the influence of storms, is 

 caused by dead branches allowed to remain upon the 

 tree or from the stumps of branches left in pruning. It is 

 an almost invariable custom in this country, when a 

 branch is cut from the stem of a tree, to leave a stump a 

 few inches long, as shown in Figure 2. The end of this 

 branch, as it has no lateral shoot to insure a flow of sap, 

 is not healed over with a new formation of wood and bark, 

 and soon dies. Decay thus begins, as appears in Figure 

 3, and this decay gradually extends into the interior of 

 the trunk, as shown in Figure 4, ruining the tree for any 

 useful purpose, and so weakening the supporting power of 

 the stem, that a severe gale will prostrate it. This decay can 

 be prevented by cutting off dead branches as fast as they 

 appear, and by cutting living branches, when it is neces- 

 sary for any reason to remove them, close to the trunk or 

 close to a lateral branch. The secret of good pruning 

 lies in cutting close, so that the wound may heal by the 

 formation of a new growth over the cut surface. No 

 matter how large it may be necessary to make the 

 wound, no branch stump, large or small, should be left in 

 pruning. A coating of coal-tar applied to the wound as 

 soon as made will serve to pro- 

 tect it from moisture, and will 

 not interfere with the formation 

 of a new layer of v/ood. 



Pruning, so far as the trees are 

 concerned, can be done at any 

 time, except in very early spring, 

 when they are gorged with sap 

 and "bleed" more freely than 

 at other seasons of the year. 

 The autumn, however, is found to 

 be the best time for such work. 

 There is more leisure now than 

 earlier in the season, while the 

 coating of ice which often, in this 

 branches of trees in winter, makes it difficult and danger- 

 ous to work among them. 



Three men at least are needed to prune a large tree 

 properly, and to manage the long, heavy ladders which 

 this operation makes necessary. One man stands at a 

 little distance from the tree and directs where the cuts 



Si. 



Fig. 3- 



climate, covers the 



