204 



THE PEACH AND NECTABINE. 



furnishes a quick and ready means of remoring all useless, superfluous, 

 or exhausted wood out of the tree. Peach trees left to themselves would 

 quickly sprawl all over the wall, and bear, if at all, only on the extremity 

 of the shoots (Pig. 36). Fig. 37 shows how the place of fertility may 

 be changed by pruning. In virtue of the laws in vegetable physiology, of 

 the strongest rush of sap to the extremities of growth, the outsides of 

 trees would be extended at the expense of their bases and centres. As 

 the peach makes strong annual shoots, varying from a foot to a yard in 

 length, were all these left full length a very few seasons would suf&ce to 

 ruin the finest trees, for not only would all the best shoots of one year be 

 found on the tip ends of the previous one, but the majority of the buds 



Fig. 36^ 



JPis. 37. 



towards the base of the shoots would either break extremely weak or not 

 at all. The result would be that the bearing wood would be found only 

 on the outer and chiefly also the upper portions of the trees. Hence not 

 only the form of the trees would be ruined, but the quantity of fruit from 

 a given area of waE would be reduced one-half or three-fourths ; thus 

 pruning, by keeping up a supply of bearing wood over the whole surface 

 of the tree, concentrates fertility. 



But pruning does this in yet other ways. By reducing the number of 

 branches and modifying their character by summer pinching and root 

 pruning, very little but fruit-bearing wood is produced. Leave peaches 

 unpruned, and they produce a perfect forest of shoots, more like a willow 

 copse than a fruit-bearing tree. The result, at the fall of the leaf, is a 

 thin crop of meagre lanky wood buds from base to summit, all incapable 



