CHAPTER XVI 

 DWARF TREE PRUNING AND TRAINING 



270. Dwarf trees, those small growing varieties of a 

 species, are considered desirable mainly because they 

 require less space than do the normal-sized ones. There 

 is no difficulty in maintaining dwarfness in the dwarf 

 varieties — those that are dwarf by nature. They simply 

 do not grow larger than their normal size and, there- 

 fore, do not require special treatment to keep them small. 

 But there is another group — the plants that must be 

 specially handled to make them dwarf in the first place 

 and then specially handled to keep them small. The 

 most extreme cases of this kind are produced by special 

 cultural methods practiced by the Japanese, who compel 

 trees which in nature attain considerable size to grow 

 for many years in flower pots far smaller than would be 

 required to hold the roots of a plant of the same species 

 if transplanted from the open ground at the close of even 

 its first growing season. The methods by which this is 

 done, however, do not concern us here, as they are cul- 

 tural rather than dependent upon pruning. 



The plants that do concern us are those individuals 

 which normally grow large but which, by means of graft- 

 age, top and root pruning are compelled to be small to 

 suit our convenience or caprice. In order to understand 

 how these should be handled to keep them small, it may 

 be well to quote the following paragraphs from the au- 

 thor's book, "Plant Propagation."* 



Dwarfing trees to be grown in the open requires that cions or 

 buds be worked on slow-growing stocks and later headed-in. 

 Plants may also be dwarfed by growing them in confined quarters, 

 such as boxes, tubs and pots too small for their normal development. 

 Nurserymen can go no further than supplying the specimens; after- 



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