CHAPTEE VI 



PRUNING 



The severe pruning to which many of the best 

 and finest Eoses are annually subjected may well 

 cause some dismay to a novice, who might perhaps 

 not only ask why we should destroy such a large 

 part of the plants we so cherished the year before, 

 but also go on to the wider question " Why is 

 pruning necessary for any purpose? Why should 

 not our Eose-trees grow as fine and large as they 

 will?" 



The answer is to be found in the manner of the 

 natural growth of the Eose. By watching an un- 

 pruned Eose-tree, either wild or cultivated, it will 

 be found that the first strong shoot flowers well the 

 second season but gets weaker at the extremity in a 

 year or two, and another strong shoot starts consider- 

 ably lower down or even from the very base of the 

 plant, and this soon absorbs the majority of the sap 

 and will eventually starve the original shoot, and be 

 itself thus starved in succession by another. A rose 

 in a natural state has thus every year some branches 

 which are becoming weakened by the fresh young 

 shoots growing out below them. This is one of the 



