140 MANUAL OF GARDENING 
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 little 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 
