140 MANUAL OF GABDENING 



taken off. The removing of the old flowers, which is to be 

 advised with flower-garden plants (page 116), is also a species 

 of pruning. 



Distinction should be made between pruning and shearing. 

 Plants are sheared into given shapes. This may be necessary in 

 bedding-plants, and occasionally when a formal effect is desired 

 in shrubs and trees; but the best taste is displayed, in the vast 

 majority of cases, in allowing the plants to assume their natural 

 habits, merely keeping them shapely, cutting out old or dead 

 wood, and, in some cases, preventing such crowding of shoots 

 as will reduce the size of the bloom. The common practice of 

 shearing shrubbery is very much to be reprehended; this sub- 

 ject is discussed from another point of view on page 24. 



The pruner should know the flower-bearing habit of the plant 

 that he prunes, — whether the bloom is on the shoots of last 

 season or on the new wood of the present season, and whether 

 the flower-buds of spring-blooming plants are separate from 

 the leaf-buds. A very httle careful observation will determine 

 these points for any plant. (1) The spring-blooming woody 

 plants usually produce their flowers from buds perfected the 

 fall before and remaining dormant over winter. This is true 

 of most fruit-trees, and such shrubs as lilac, forsythia, tree 

 peony, wistaria, some spireas and viburnums, weigela, deutzia. 

 Cutting back the shoots of these plants early in spring or late 

 in fall, therefore, removes the bloom. The proper time to 

 prune such plants (unless one intends to reduce or thin the 

 bloom) is just after the flowering season. (2) The summer- 

 blooming woody plants usually produce their flowers on shoots 

 that grow early in the same season. This is true of grapes, 

 quince, hybrid perpetual roses, shrubby hibiscus, crape myrtle, 

 mock orange, hydrangea (paniculata), and others. Pruning in 

 winter or early spring to secure strong new shoots is, therefore, 

 the proper procedure in these cases. 



Remarks on pruning may be found under the discussion of 



